They were almost home when she noticed Quill obsessively checking the rearview mirrors. She twisted around in her seat to see a black jeep rolling along the winding two-lane road behind them.
“How long has that been there?” she asked.
“A while.”
“Is it the same one from town?”
“Yep.”
“How did they know where we went?” She tried to detect any strange magic around it, but she didn’t feel anything. Maybe they were too far away. “Are they witches?” she asked.
“Nope.”
Shaneesha had fallen asleep with her green snake coiled around her neck. Sagely shivered and turned her eyes to Raina, who was staring out the window with a blank, faraway look in her eyes. Her seal lay curled into the crook of her elbow. On the sliver of seat between Quill and Sagely, Muffy had curled up and fallen asleep. The mink had made herself at home on Muffy, as if she were her own personal pillow. So much for Muffy wanting to eat her.
Sagely turned back to Quill. “Anything we need to worry about?”
“Not sure,” he said, swinging off the highway onto a narrow dirt road that led to their coven’s home.
“And this is why we don’t use big, flashy magic in the middle of town,” Raina muttered just loud enough so they all heard.
Sagely bit her tongue, because maybe it was true. Even Quill was mad at her. She seemed to have crossed some line that was worse than Quill tampering with Raina’s familiar.
They bounced along the road, faster than they should on a dirt road. The night of the attack flashed before Sagely’s eyes, and she gripped the dash, breathing hard. Quill glanced over, his lips tight. When he saw her distress, though, he slowed he truck. He reached over and stroked the back of her head, smoothing her red hair.
“I’d die before I let them hurt you,” he murmured, his green eyes flashing. The warmth of their bond washed over her, soothing now that she was used to it. Magic coursed between them. Not just his magic protecting her, but their magic, protecting them.
She smiled at him, and for just a second, she thought everything would be fine. And then the jeep rammed into the back of the pickup.
Twenty
Shaneesha slammed into the back of the Datsun’s seat, her braids flying. Quill spun the wheel, maneuvering the truck from sliding into the ditch as Shaneesha let out a stream of curses that would make anyone blush under other circumstances. But there was no time for polite language.
Already, Sagely’s blood was pounding in her head, and every muscle in her body was taut, ready to fight. This time, she’d have help. This time, she was not an unsuspecting girl just getting done with a relaxing evening at the park, with no idea that warlocks existed, let alone wanted to murder her.
This time, she was ready for the bastard.
“Stay in the car,” Quill growled when she reached for the door handle. The jeep roared up behind them, smashing into the truck’s tailgate again. The truck’s back end slid off the gravel shoulder into the ditch, but Quill gassed it, and it lurched out again in a spray of gravel.
“Can I use my magic now?” Sagely asked.
“Get down,” Quill said. “I don’t even want them to know you’re in the truck.”
“Can’t you make a bullet and shoot them or something?”
“Good idea,” Shaneesha said. “Too bad Quill’s the only one here who can do that with ease, and he’s busy driving.”
“Not too busy,” Quill said, and she was sure she caught a flicker of satisfaction in his determined eyes. So he wasn’t completely good after all—he was itching for the fight, too. Sagely could feel adrenaline pulsing inside him like a high. With one hand on the wheel, he swerved the truck out of the way of the jeep, dodging it this time. His other hand cranked the window down. He reached out, and a handful of gravel flew up from the road into his hand as if magnetized.
Dropping it into his lap, he grabbed the wheel and twisted furiously as the jeep once again bashed the truck, this time roaring up beside it and swerving to slam into the side panel. Metal screeched against metal, and Quill yelled for them to get down. Sagely ducked, wondering why the others couldn’t make bullets, and why they were invited to come along if they couldn’t be of any help when attacked.
Quill flung his hand out the window, and something flew from his palm and smashed the jeep’s windshield into a spider web of cracks. Instead of stopping, the jeep plowed ahead, knocking the Datsun sideways into the ditch and barreling in front of it. It stopped in a spray of gravel and a swirl of dust.
Raina coughed and sputtered as the cloud of dust billowed through Quill’s window and into the cab of the truck. Quill leapt out, yelling for them to stay there.
Fat chance.
Sagely was out of the truck seconds after him, bringing up the rear. She gathered the magic swelling inside her, converging into a ball of energy as intense as the sun. There was nothing void about this—it was all here, all presence, all substance. Her instincts honed in on the figure emerging from the jeep, as if she were looking at him through a scope.
When he stepped from the cloud of Arkansas red dust, she froze. It was not the man in the black cloak and hat. For a moment, she couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe. She’d never seen someone so beautiful in her life.
Oddly, he was not someone she’d normally be attracted to. He was barely taller than her, only a bit over five feet, with black hair that fell in baby-soft waves to his chin, and features delicate to the point of femininity. His eyes were a rich brown that she couldn’t tear her own eyes from once they met. His flawless skin glowed with an almost iridescent sheen.
“Fox,” Quill growled.
“Quill,” the stranger said, his voice surprisingly strong and commanding for such a pretty little guy. “I want the girl.”
“Over my dead body,” Raina said, stepping up beside Sagely.
Sagely glanced at her, surprised.
“If it can’t be avoided, so be it,” the man named Fox said.
“Wait,” Quill said, turning to Sagely. Their eyes met, and she registered agony there. He swallowed hard and said in a voice so quiet that she could barely hear him, “Sagely, I’ll fight to the death for you, if you want to be a part of our coven. But if you don’t, now is your chance. You haven’t been initiated. You’re free to do as you please.” His eyes were haunted, full of uncertainty, and she could feel what it cost him to release her and the part of him that she carried inside her.
She thought about it for a second. If she wanted to go, if she didn’t want to live underground, she could leave. But she didn’t even know who this guy was. He was definitely not full of blackness and evil like the one who attacked her, though. In fact, she couldn’t feel any magic coming from him at all. Just a feeling of something unfamiliar, foreign. She could spare the witches more attacks like these—from strangely alluring creatures like this one as well as dark witches. She could spare them the danger of her own magic, the accidents that could happen while she was learning to use it.
“I don’t want you to leave,” Quill said quietly. “I…I will protect you. You’ll be as safe with us as anywhere else.”
“Safer,” Raina said, her voice venomous and her lips drawn back from her teeth in a sneer. She looked like she was ready to rip the guy’s throat out, and the magic inside her was pulsing out an ugly rhythm.
“It’s your call,” Quill said quietly, his voice straining to hold back the emotion behind those words. “You’re part faerie, so I’ll understand if you want to explore that part of yourself.”
Sagely spotted the pointed ears then, mostly concealed by Fox’s gently flowing locks.
“Give us the girl, and everyone leaves happy,” Fox said. He slunk forward a few steps, and she couldn’t help but admire his gait, as sexy and supple as a snake.
Quill growled beside her, and she realized he was picking up on her strange attraction. It wasn’t like she meant to find this guy hot!
“If going with you makes her happy,
she may,” Quill said. “Otherwise, no one is leaving with you. But it’s her choice. Not yours.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she assured Quill. “Not if I can help it.”
“Not my first choice, but if I have to take you by force, I will,” Fox said. The doors to his jeep flew open, and three more little faeries stepped out. They were all impossibly beautiful and delicate.
One of them crouched like a panther, ready to spring, and bared her blindingly white, sharp teeth. When snarling, she was a little less delicate looking—but only a little.
They all leapt forward at once, as one, seeming to hang in the air before dropping to the ground in front of the witches, a good ten feet from where they started. Quill threw up his hands and fired magic bursts at them in rapid succession, like tiny blue bullets.
“Get back,” he yelled to his companions as he fended off the fae.
Shaneesha braced herself and began swirling her arms as if pulling invisible threads from them. With a heave, she threw a blast of flame at them. It knocked the panther-like girl to the ground. With a screech, Quill’s mink leapt onto her and began to shred her skin with its claws. Another faery, this one as blonde and ethereal as an angel, staggered to stay on her feet. The ground beneath her heaved, and she tumbled backwards, scrabbling at the dirt rising under her.
While Quill was busy with her, Sagely focused on the last faery, a guy with a long, fuchsia braid that reached his waist. He looked confused for a second, then fixed his sky blue eyes on her. Crap.
He was so beautiful that for a second, she lost concentration. He seemed to glow with unearthly light, an enchanting smile stretching across his face. In one motion, he dove at her. She spun, delivering a roundhouse kick right on his pointy little faerie ear.
Quill sent a wave of earth over the blonde and spun just in time to knock the fuchsia-haired guy off his feet with white-hot ball of light.
Without warning, Fox somersaulted toward them, sailed through the air, and body slammed Sagely. Her arm jerked up in a high block, almost involuntary, and cracked against his chin. He didn’t even blink. He weighed at least a thousand pounds, or so it seemed. She was crushed into the hard-packed dirt, the breath knocked out of her. With a roar of fury, Quill sent a stream of blue light into him like a laser beam.
The faery who fell came whirling towards them like a cyclone and smashed into Quill. His beam of magic broke off, and she sank her teeth into his neck. His familiar shrieked and raced to him, clamping onto the faery’s delicate ankle.
“If you won’t come, then give it back,” Fox commanded, his eyes boring into Sagely’s. Suddenly, she was frozen, unable to move as something from his eyes suspended her in time, trapping them like the only two people in the world. His breath was gentle against her cheeks, like a flower-scented breeze on a spring morning. His hypnotic gaze ensnared her, and she nodded mutely.
A smiled turned up the corners of his red mouth. “Good girl,” he said, his voice deepening, his eyes as hungry as a starving man’s. A shiver of pleasure ran through her, and her pulse raced. Her body responded to the pressure of his in the most carnal way, and she quivered under him even as she felt something cold and hungry invading her, like tendrils of ice searching her fevered veins.
Beside her, Quill flung off the female faery. Shaneesha slammed her with a blast of flame that knocked her twenty feet down the road. She crashed into the trees, shrieking and beating at the flames consuming her.
The guy with the braid and the blonde who had unearthed herself now converged on Quill, and while he was busy holding them off with flashes of blue fire, Fox reached for Sagely’s throat.
Suddenly, he cried out and froze. Literally. His hand hovered inches from her neck, frozen into a claw. He drew back, holding it to his chest and gasping.
When his eyes snapped to Raina, the spell was broken, and revulsion dropped into Sagely’s gut like a rock. Was she just lusting after this sweet little fairy who was at that very moment trying to kill her?
She bucked her hips up, knocking him off balance, and punched him square in the face. Her knuckles flared with a pain like she’d just punched a brick wall. She rolled sideways and leapt to her feet, barely clearing his grasping claw. He arched backwards with another cry. Though she stood ten feet away, Raina’s hands were extended towards him, locking him in some kind of twisted hold. Meanwhile, her seal waddled over to sink his teeth into Fox’s calf just as Sagely delivered a solid front kick to his chest. He grasped for her one last time with a frozen, blue hand.
Sagely chopped his wrist with a knife-hand strike. To her horror, his thumb snapped off and tumbled to the dusty road between them. Fox fell to his knees, grappling for his dismembered thumb.
Sagely shot Raina a grateful smile, still flustered by the strange effect Fox had on her. Shaneesha had blasted the blonde to the ground again, and Quill grabbed the last guy’s braid and wound his hand in it, twisting him around and around. With a heave, he hoisted the faery into the air and spun him around his head before letting go. The boy flew through the air, flailing, before landing over a branch and hanging there, as limp as an empty pair of clothes.
“Get in the truck,” Quill barked, scooping Sagely up in his arms. He raced to the truck and set her in the seat hurriedly but gently, before leaping into his seat. Shaneesha dove into the backseat, her snake curled snugly around her neck. Muffy, who had been lounging across the back seat, gave her a look that said exactly how put-out she was at having to wake up and move.
We’ll have to work on her fierce familiar routine, Sagely thought.
Raina gave Fox one last savage kick where he lay, then scooped up Seeley and streaked over to leap into the car. The guy with the braid was just dropping from the tree, into a crouch, when Quill floored the gas pedal.
Twenty-One
As the truck leapt forward, Quill’s mink came sailing through the window and landed in Sagely’s lap. The truck roared forward over the mound of earth Quill had made, and Sagely winced, hoping she didn’t hear the crunch of bones along with gravel. Was a faery buried in that mound?
“I thought witches didn’t fight or kill,” Sagely said, her heart pounding as the truck bore down on the faery.
“We don’t,” Quill said, not letting up on the gas as he veered around the jeep. “If we can help it.”
“Faeries aren’t people,” Raina said, wiping a smudge of blood off her cheek. Something hit the truck from behind, sending the back end reeling off the road again.
“Oh, hell no,” Sagely said, turning in her seat. “Not this time, asshole.”
She threw out her hand the way she’d seen the others do, trying to blast Fox off the back with her magic. Nothing happened. Great. When she didn’t need magic, she could make a bubble to contain her own coven, but when she needed it most, her magic refused to show itself. Like Quill said, it was mischievous.
“I got this,” Shaneesha said, turning and throwing open the window at the back of the cab. She flung her hand out, but before she could knock him off, Fox leapt forward and sank his teeth into her wrist. She shrieked in pain.
Sagely scrunched up her mouth in concentration and tried again. This time, a sheet of ice formed across Fox’s face, and before he could recover, the mink jumped up and scratched him across the throat. Shaneesha wrenched her arm free, tearing off a chunk of her flesh as she did so. A stream of blood blew from Fox’s mouth as she slammed him with another blast of fire that rocketed him backwards off the truck.
Sagely was still watching him when she was flung forward, and she felt the sickening thud of the truck hitting a small, fragile body.
“Don’t look,” Quill barked.
Sagely whipped around in her seat in time to see the fuchsia-haired faery rolling off the hood of the truck and flopping into the ditch.
“I said don’t look,” Quill said, his voice tight.
“Sorry, I’m not very good at following directions.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Don’t wo
rry, it’s not just you,” she said. “Ask any of my professors.”
“Are they gone?” Shaneesha asked through clenched teeth. She was cradling her wounded arm against her abdomen, where blood was seeping into her shirt.
“Let me see,” Raina said, taking Shaneesha’s hand gently and turning her arm. A gaping hole bled freely on Shaneesha’s forearm. “I’ll close it up, but you’ll have to get the venom out later.”
As Raina rested a hand gingerly on the wound, Shaneesha gasped through clenched teeth and squeezed her eyes closed. Sagely kept watch out the back window as Quill drove, blood trickling from his neck wound.
“What the hell?” Sagely asked at last, turning to face forward when she didn’t see anyone following.
“Faeries,” Quill said darkly.
Sagely wanted to heal his neck, but she didn’t want her magic to go wrong and turn him to stone or something. She looked at Raina, swallowing hard. “Can you…fix him?” she asked, though it just about killed her that she couldn’t do it.
Raina gave her a haughty smile and reached up to cover Quill’s neck with her palm. When she finished, she gave his neck a few caresses before retreating.
Sagely bit back her jealousy and smiled at Raina, locking eyes with her to show her she wasn’t intimidated. “Thank you.”
“Anything for Quill,” Raina said, sliding her long blonde hair back over her shoulder.
“You can heal people?” Sagely asked.
“I’m a water witch,” Raina said with pride. “We have healing abilities, since most of the human body is made of water.”
“I thought you said your coven is all earth witches,” Sagely said to Quill.
He smiled and arched an eyebrow at her. “I said most.”
“That’s why he chose us to come,” Shaneesha said. “The more elements we’ve mastered, the better we can fight as a team.”
Magic of the Void: A Reverse Harem Witch Series (Winslow Witch Chronicles Book 1) Page 10