Of Fear and Faith: A Witch and Shapeshifter Romance (Death and Destiny Trilogy Book 1)

by N. D. Jones

  He twined his hands in her red-gold hair, still wet from the purification ritual, and began to run his fingers through the thick curls. He angled his head to her neck, breathed her in, and smiled in satisfaction.

  “You smell like gardenias—peace, love, and health. This is your scent,” he said, then, because he couldn’t hold back any longer, he kissed that rapidly throbbing neck of hers, little nips that saturated his tongue with her perfect, magical taste.

  “This is who you are,” he mumbled between swipes of his tongue, then raised his head and covered her mouth with his. The kiss, controlled but passionate, was not meant to ignite the growing flame burning in him. Yet the potency of the melding of their lips, their mouths, their tongues, was arousing enough to send a surge of unbound magical energy from Assefa and into Sanura.

  She moaned and clutched him hard, pressing pointy, aroused nipples into his bare chest.

  Assefa groaned. The woman was killing him. Did she know how close he was to ripping that man-teasing bikini off of her, spinning her around, and claiming her with hard, long thrusts of animal craving and need?

  With effort, he released Sanura. And her smile of appreciation almost undid him. “This is who you’re meant to be,” he said, taking in the unique coloring of her hair and eyes once more. “You’re as stunning and precious as a green South African diamond. Thank you for sharing yourself so fully with me.”

  Again, her smile was bright and heartbreakingly grateful. A man could get used to being smiled at like that.

  He helped Sanura from the hot tub and whispered, “Now it’s my turn to do a bit of sharing.”

  Assefa followed Sanura inside, closing and locking the door behind them. She grabbed a fluffy beige towel for herself and handed him one. Neither speaking, they dried themselves off. Once dry, Sanura disappeared around a corner, returning with two garments.

  Sanura passed Assefa one of the items, a white ceremonial robe made of expertly woven silk. The robe had long, wide sleeves that would come to the wearer’s wrists and a long body that more than likely reached ankles. The robe had a front zipper that was discreetly covered by a gold embroidered flap.

  He turned the robe over and held it away from him in order to better see the garment. On the back of the robe was a design of a seated Sekhmet, the warrior goddess of Upper Egypt. In her hands, she held an ankh of life, while a solar disk rested atop her lion’s head.

  He flipped the robe over again and noticed something he hadn’t the first time. How could I have missed them? In the upper left-hand corner, over the heart, was a small print of a spotted jaguar and under that, a black jaguar.

  He looked to Sanura, and she explained. “That’s my father’s robe. My mother gave it to him during their handfasting ceremony. It’s a custom, in my family, for fathers to pass on their robes to their daughter, who then passes it on to her mate.”

  “What if the father has more than one daughter?”

  “I don’t know. For as far back as my family records go, only a female child has been born to each witch-cat mating. The men in my family only seem to make girls.” Sanura shrugged. “It’s weird, and I can’t begin to explain it.”

  Pointing to the robe, she continued. “This particular robe has been in my family for four generations. The robe includes the print of the inner cat of the previous wearer. A new print is added only if it isn’t already represented on the robe.”

  “Meaning, if my inner cat isn’t one of the two already depicted, then I get to add my own unique print?”

  She nodded, reddish-gold hair caressing her bare shoulders. “The robe is a spiritual and physical reminder of my family’s bloodline and my connection to my ancestors. It’s been magically preserved. It will endure. It has endured. Just like my family.”

  Seeing the jaguars so beautifully displayed on the ceremonial robe, Assefa realized that each female in Sanura’s family, for the last four generations, had been biologically compatible with a man who had a jaguar as his inner animal spirit. Assefa’s inner animal spirit was not a jaguar. No animal so normal as that. A beast. He solemnly wondered if the truth would negatively impact the rest of the ritual and their ultimate joining.

  His face must’ve revealed his distress, for Sanura gently touched his arm. “Don’t worry, Assefa, I’m sure your cat spirit will complement my earth spirit, no matter the type of cat you reveal to me during the dreaming.”

  He smiled, but her kind words held little reassurance. Her otherworldly hair and eyes may have been different, but they were spectacular nonetheless. His cat…well, the only thing spectacular about it was how well it stalked and killed its prey. A predator of predators.

  No matter. Like Sanura, he was what he was. She would either accept his beast or she wouldn’t. Rejection. That was the real beast.

  Unzipping the robe, he took great care when he put it on, honored to wear the delicate family heirloom.

  When he had it on, he noticed Sanura staring at him, eyes suspiciously moist. They hadn’t spoken much about her deceased father, but it was clear that Makena and Sanura were still mourning the death of Samuel Williams. And here she had just gifted him with the dead man’s handfasting robe. Dammit, he didn’t want to disappoint her, ruin what could be a turning point in their lives. But how would she react when she saw what truly slept within him? Would her spirit shriek in horror and abandon the ritual, or would she embrace him the way he’d done her? Only time would tell.

  Assefa watched as she slid into her own robe. Hers was crafted much like her father’s. It was also white, made of silk, and had flowing wide sleeves. Sanura’s, however, had a hood that hung halfway down the back. Unlike her father’s robe—my robe—hers didn’t have images of jaguars over her heart. No, there was an inscription instead. In the Yoruba language, if he wasn’t mistaken. Assefa knew a little Yoruba, but just beginner stuff, nothing more.

  “What does the inscription say?”

  Without looking, Sanura said, “‘Oya has blessed our family. May our ancestors bless and watch over you in all the dark places you may walk.’”

  Sanura slid one index finger over the gold writing. She did look at it then, and Assefa saw both pride and fear in her eyes.

  He thought he understood one, but not the other.

  “All females in my family are given their handfasting robes on their eighteenth birthday,” Sanura informed. “It’s anointed and inscribed by the eldest female member of the family. In my case, my maternal grandmother made this robe and gave it to me ten years ago.”

  Assefa walked around Sanura to take in the full beauty of the robe. On the back of the garment was an incredible landscape. He ran his fingers over the smoothly raised design. The Niger and Benue Rivers flowed from the northwest to the southern lands through tropical rain forests and swamps to their delta in the Gulf of Guinea. To the south of the great rivers were lowlands merging into central hills and plateaus. The entire design was encircled in what could only be described as a fierce fire of wind—protecting, shielding.

  Assefa lowered his suddenly trembling hand and took a step backward. He stared at the design, seeing the truth behind each purposeful stitch. The symbols were so clear, the elements. Oya’s elements of power, the elements of the fire witch of legend. The prophecy can’t be true. It just couldn’t, because if it was, hell was about to come calling—in a violent tsunami of water witch destruction.

  And if Sanura was the fire witch of legend, he knew what that made him. More than a shifter with a mythical beast as my cat spirit. Yes, it would make him…The cat of legend. The label he’d run from his entire life. A children’s story he refused to acknowledge as anything other than one of Aesop’s many fables.

  He turned Sanura around to face him. He had to know for sure. “You’re an elemental earth witch?”

  “A fire earth witch,” she corrected, “with the potential to cast wind and thunderbolt spells, or so I’ve been told by the Council of Witch Elders my entire life.”

  She shrugged, but Assef
a could see there was nothing nonchalant in that movement. Ah, now he understood the pride and fear he’d seen earlier. She should be afraid. They both should. And, hell, macho bull aside, Assefa was afraid.

  “So, you know this handfasting isn’t just about us?”

  “Yes, I know,” she said, voice low and solemn.

  Assefa cursed the cold, twisted hand of irony. Fate and love, power and war, they couldn’t have one without the other, not if the prophecy was true, not if they were the witch and cat of legend.

  “Let’s just get through the first part of the ritual. Besides, I’ve never cast a wind or lightning spell in my life. My hair and eyes are probably just flukes of nature, nothing more. Weird biology. I'm not the fire witch of legend.”

  Good thing she didn’t follow Makena’s footsteps and become a lawyer, for Sanura Williams would have no luck in swaying juries, not with the unconvincing argument she’d just given him.

  Wanting too much for her to be right, Assefa didn’t bother challenging Sanura. They would know soon enough. She would turn twenty-nine next month, and his twenty-ninth birthday will follow three months later.

  Earth births water. The sun births fire. But the moon, in its crescent state, brings forth the beast, giving away half of itself to make the beast whole, in order to birth the man. The opening lines to the Sudanese tale about the fire witch and cat of legend churned in his head. Assefa remembered it well, remembered it all.

  He shoved the memory aside. Sanura had just retrieved her athame, a ritual knife. The black-handled, double-edged iron blade had hieroglyphic symbols engraved on it, symbols he didn’t know, except for one. Fire. The witch often personalized such knives, and the symbols served to blend the energy of the tool with the witch’s magical intentions. Assefa knew the athame could be used to cast the magic circle, which he assumed was how Sanura intended to use it tonight.

  Through his own study, Assefa understood that the purpose of the magic circle was to raise magical power, to create an area to serve as a passageway to the spirit realm, and to contain and focus the energy witches create through the casting of spells, to make it more potent. There was also an element of protection to the circle. By casting it, the witch ensured that no malign forces could penetrate and affect the outcome of her spell. Clearly, Sanura was ready to begin.

  “Last chance to change your mind, Special Agent Berber.”

  He gave her smiling lips a quick kiss. “Not a chance, Dr. Williams. I’m at your service.”

  She winked at him. “Famous last words. I’ll remember you said that.”

  Sanura refocused, and Assefa watched on in silence.

  The first step, he knew, in setting a magical circle was to clean the area. This Sanura did with a ritual broom. She swept the carpet—energy field—of negativity. Then she used the low table in the center of the room as an altar, on which incense was already placed. She lit them. Three.

  She then proceeded to walk the circle three times clockwise, carrying a censer in her hand. As she slowly walked the circumference of the circle, she incanted, “I conjure you, oh circle of power, to be a wall of protection against malign and negative forces. May you be cleansed of all impurities. May this circle preserve and contain the power I raise within.”

  His kind, when they had been warlocks, could do what Sanura was doing now, but no longer. Instead, shifters were conduits of magical power. Without them, without a familiar, witches could never become mistress of any earth element. Yet, a witch stood before him who may have the potential to wield three of the four elemental powers. But it was he, a cat shifter from the Sudan, who wasn’t a jaguar, lion, cheetah, or any other known and accepted witch’s familiar, who possibly held the key to her chest of power. What will she think when she sees my beast? The cat feared above all others?

  Sanura used her athame to draw a pentagram to invoke the elements. A thin, red wave of magic seemed to bleed from the athame, forming the shape an inch above the carpet. “I invoke you, oh elements, the living earth, the breathing air, the warming fire, the chilling water. I invoke you, great goddess Isis. I invoke you. Be with me. Smile upon your fire witch.”

  She moved her athame around the outer limit of the circle, counterclockwise, and incanted, “This protective circle is open.”

  Assefa felt an indescribable energy flow up and around them. The magical energy she created, they created, was like diving into a lake in the dead of winter, with all your clothes on, surrounded by a blazing ring of fire. He was bone-cold and spirit-hot. His beast moved closer to the surface, seduced by the power of Sanura’s spirit. The beast was already drawn to her, taking in her scent and licking his jowl in approval, in hunger.

  “Come kneel with me, Assefa.”

  He took Sanura’s extended hand, and they knelt, facing each other.

  “Just listen to my words and allow yourself to enter a serene state. Listen and follow. Listen and trust. Trust and have faith. In me. In my fire spirit.”

  He did, so he closed his eyes, listening to her melodic chanting.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Sanura stood and proceeded to the north quadrant of the circle. “I summon you, living earth, as I light this candle. I summon you, Isis. Bring power and strength to my spell.”

  She moved to the east quadrant and lit the white candle already on the floor. “I summon you, breathing air, as I light this candle. I summon you, Isis. Bring power and strength to my spell.”

  At the south quadrant, she lit the candle and incanted, “I summon you, warming fire, as I light this candle. I summon you, Isis. Bring power and strength to my spell.”

  Finally, she walked to the west quadrant and placed a water dish down. “I summon you, chilling water, as I light this candle. I summon you, Isis. Bring power and strength to my spell.”

  Once finished, she returned to her position in front of a now serene-looking Assefa. His eyes were closed, breathing slow and steady. He was already in a meditative state. Good.

  Sanura lifted her hood and covered her head. Except for her mouth, her entire face was concealed. Reaching for him, she found Assefa’s large, strong hands and began a silent prayer. It was an ancient Nigerian prayer, passed down through matrilineal descent. Makena had taught it to her as a child, long before Sanura knew the significance of the words. And she recited them now.

  The familiar words easily flowed from her, through her, a plea, an invitation to Assefa’s animal spirit to join her fire spirit in the astrophysical plane. If his cat spirit didn’t answer her call, respond to the magical summons, then there could be nothing more between them than friendship. Because only a witch’s true familiar could follow the tracks left by her fire spirit, hear her song of joining.

  She recited a soothing and melodic prayer to his inner cat, encouraging him to trust and join her. After five minutes of this, their spirits were transported to a realm beyond physical comprehension, beyond the theories of men like Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. Their spirits traveled over the magical speedway to a place of mysticism and wonder, defying all the laws of the universe known to mere mortal men.

  The plane appeared to be a vast space of nothingness as far as the eye could see. Sanura’s reddish-gold hair blew in an improbable breeze. Green eyes glistened as she sought to make sense of her surroundings. Right before her eyes, the realm started to take form and purpose. The gray dullness gave way to a hot, bright desert. Yellow-gold rays littered the sky above, a canopy that felt thick and heavy. She bent to touch the sand now under her bare feet, the granules like raw salt in her hands. It felt so real, as did the sun beaming down on her brow, causing a trickle of sweat to roll down her moist cheeks.

  Her fire spirit came to life in this place of mystery and heat. It fueled her fire beast, and the sizzle of contentment was loud in Sanura’s ears. Her fire spirit was elated, and it wanted to be completely set free, to be able to roam and explore. To hunt. But Sanura was having none of that. She couldn’t let the spirit off her leash, not even here. Not ever. But she cou
ld let her guide, Sanura, permit the spirit to cast her net for the cat they both sought. The one they both wanted. For once, Sanura and her spirit were in complete agreement.

  Unable to wait and do nothing, Sanura set out in search of Assefa’s cat. Clearly, the prayer she’d been reciting for the last hour hadn’t been enough to tempt the elusive cat to her side. In her search, the only other “living” creatures she’d come across had been typical desert dwellers—snakes, scorpions, cacti, all of which served to add realism to a place meant to bend and contort reality. But there was no sound, nor smell Sanura could detect, other than the squishing of sand underfoot and her own perspiration. The realm was stale, devoid of a true essence that could breathe life into its veins like rainfall to a drought-plagued Texas town.

  Exhausted, Sanura stopped. She had no idea how long she’d been walking or whether she was even going in the right direction. If there is a right direction. Her fire spirit was now agitated, desperate even, and Sanura was lava-hot with the magic it took to keep her on this plane. If she didn’t find Assefa soon, or him her, she would have no choice but to release the repressed energy, sending it back to the earth that had birthed it. And that, as the saying went, would be that. End of ritual. End of a destiny.

  Slowly, she faced each direction, and still, her cat was nowhere in sight. It had all been a cruel joke. The attraction, the magical connection she felt with Assefa. Nothing but an illusion. Just like this place.

  Just as she was about to give up, Sanura saw a glimmer of a shape in the distance. He moved watchfully but nimbly toward her. The form was like a mirage in the middle of the desert, a trick of the mind and heart. But he kept coming, and she found herself as deeply rooted to the ground as a California Redwood.

  Sanura strained her eyes to get a better glimpse, a clue in size, shape, or color as to the species of cat, but the picture was fuzzy. More minutes passed, then, finally, the cat came into full view.