Juniper

by Eva Delaney

  I broke into a run, leaving the rest of the battle to dildos, Alyssa, Zoe, Minerva, Jasmine…and Julian, if he decided to dial into the backup phone in Alyssa’s pocket.

  I missed working with a fully competent team.

  The magical butt plug pulsed with my every step and made me want to scratch like mad, but there was no time for that. I rushed up the rocky hillside until I felt what I was searching for.

  The spark of magic calling to me. Hundreds of pinpricks of magic like pinches along my arms and backs.

  The vault. Where Ram kept all the items we stole for him.

  I crouched on the hillside and whispered my spell, moving my fingers as precisely as a piano player. The rocks and dirt swirled away into the air, ready to fling themselves at anyone they met to suffocate them. Animating inanimate things was my specialty, after all.

  Reaching deeper and deeper into the island, I breathed life into every pebble and speck of dirt until the entire hill roared in a tornado of stinging dust and stone. That is, except for the tunnel in front of me that delved deep into the island.

  I slipped in feet first and slid down the slippery tunnel into darkness. My throat closed off and my stomach clenched as though Minerva kneaded it like dough.

  Ram hadn’t come out to fight yet. That meant he could only be in one place—and I was rushing directly into it.

  I dropped out of the tunnel and fell, landing in a crouch on solid, flat ground in pitch darkness. Before I could mouth a spell to create light, electric lights flared to life along the ceiling. Stretching to either side was row after row of bookshelves piled with amulets, stones, necklaces, books, and sculptures.

  And across from me, standing with a finger on a light switch, was Ram.

  Chapter 29

  I called on the power of the Scourge Stone. It rushed through me and shot toward Ram with grasping green claws.

  This was it. I was going to steal his magic and stop him.

  My claws slammed to a stop, and I jerked as though I had walked into a brick wall. The energy from the Stone went limp and faded from the air. The Stone itself turned cold against my asshole. I had the odd sensation that it was angry.

  My throat went dry. “How?”

  Ram chuckled and reached into the collar of his shirt to pull out a necklace of shiny black stones. “A curse deflector. I didn’t know if it would work on the Scourge Stone.” He laughed in relief. “Good thing it did.”

  Fucking flaming dick turds. As long as he wore that necklace, I wouldn’t be able to use magic against him.

  “You’ll regret attacking my home,” he said. His usually charming, warm voice turned to icy rage. His fingers moved through a complex pattern, and a wall of black energy flew at me.

  “Sabie flacara,” I said. Purple flames sprouted along my forearm, and I swung at his curse. It smashed against my fires and fizzled away. With my other hand, I fumbled along the nearest shelf, and my fist closed over an object. “Ha! Feel the might of my—”

  I glanced down. It was a stone sculpture of a pregnant woman like those ones from the stone age. “Pregnant lady,” I added and threw it at him.

  Ram whipped his curses like he was a dominatrix or some shit. It hit the sculpture, which exploded in the air. Its pieces flew at him. But like the Scourge Stone, they hit an unseen wall and fell to the floor.

  Shit.

  I yelled a curse in ancient Babylonian and whipped a flame of purple at him. Its edges were tinted blue and green, which was new for me.

  Ram’s own purple fire flashed across the room to meet mine. Our curses crashed together and exploded. The shock wave threw me back against the wall. Thankfully, the backpack cushioned my impact. I hit the floor and rolled behind a shelf. Jumping up, I grabbed another item blindly.

  This one was a glass vial filled with an eye floating in blue goo.

  I shook it, and the blue goo smoked out of the top to form a flaming metal blade. The eye remained in the vial and stared at me.

  Ram raced around the corner of the shelf and I whirled, swinging the blade at him. He leaped back, eyes wide. I grabbed something off the shelf. A brick carved with symbols. I threw it. It hit him in the gut, and he doubled over, cursing. The brick clattered to the floor.

  I shrugged. It wasn’t magic, but it worked.

  A strange language poured from Ram’s mouth, and the brick glowed yellow with unfamiliar symbols. Fuck.

  I lifted the sword between us just as a stone arm leaped from the brick and slammed into it.

  “Aaahhhh,” I screamed as I was thrown backward. My back crashed into a shelf. My asshole jolted and groaned as I landed directly on it and the butt plug.

  Dick turds, my ass was taking a pounding and it wasn’t even sexy.

  A giant stone fist flew straight at me. Grabbing magic from the Scourge Stone, I reached out with its pulsing green energy. I grabbed the fist, and it shattered to dust. Its power flowed through me—a cold alien magic—before settling between my cheeks.

  The Stone pulsed, hot and itchy. It was happy again. If only I knew how to harness the magic that thing stole.

  “Where is the Stone?” Ram demanded. His hand trailed along a shelf, feeling each item as though considering which one to use.

  “In my ass.”

  “You’ve always been full of bullshit, Juniper.”

  I climbed to my feet and held the glowing blue sword before me as I scanned the nearby shelves for the most useful item. Something that might help me break his necklace.

  “How are you defeating my wards?” Ram asked.

  “Alyssa—”

  “Would never betray me.” His eyes went wide and crazytimes like a turtle humping a shoe.

  “You sure about that?”

  Ram shook his head. “She wouldn’t,” he said softly. His lower lip trembled.

  Huh. So, he loved her back. “Well, I guess you were a terrible boyfriend.”

  “You stole her magic.” His voice rose from tender hurt to a shouting fury. “You hurt her! This is why I can’t trust anyone with power.”

  “What about all these dark witches you recruit?”

  “All you filthy magic users do is take and destroy. I shouldn’t have trusted any of you to follow my fucking orders.”

  Killing people to steal objects were his fucking orders, but I let that go for the moment. He was on the edge, and if I could push him a bit closer to madness, he might make a fatal mistake. “What has magic taken from you?”

  “Not magic. Magic users. You’re the problem.”

  “You’re a witch.”

  “Not like you. Not like our father. Not like the people who misused these objects.”

  Bingo. “I can see why you’re angry with your father if he’s the one who named you. Did he name you after his dick?”

  Ram glanced away. “Yes.”

  I laughed. I had been kidding.

  “Shut up! You don’t get to laugh just because he gave you a proper name.”

  Ah, so Alyssa had told him we were half-siblings. I still didn’t know if that was true. “Wait, what? We have the same father?” I gasped. “That can’t be!”

  “A half-demon witch named Algefer.”

  “Yep, that’s him,” I said, not bothering to act surprised this time.

  “He impregnated my mother, a normal. The dark magic inside her…well, normals can’t handle that.”

  “She died in birth.” That gave me an idea. “You know, there’s a way to bring her back. I can show you if you—”

  “Soulbinders and the Spellbinder, I know.” He rolled his eyes at me.

  Well, fuck.

  “I did that while you were still in diapers. She…” He glanced away.

  “Didn’t like your dark raising the dead act.”

  “Fuck off,” Ram said. His fists clenched at his sides, glowing purple and black.

  “She left you because of the magic, too. So did Alyssa—”

  “I’ll recover the magic you stole from her if I have to bleed you dry an
d sieve your flesh to get it back. When you get to hell, tell daddy dear I said to go fuck himself.”

  “He’s not dead—”

  Ram attacked. Double whips of flaming curses flashed toward me.

  I raised the sword and shouted a spell for a protective shield. His curses slammed into me, shattering both the shield and the sword. The glass vial broke in my hand, and I dropped the eyeball to the floor.

  Ram laughed. He pulled back his whips and struck again.

  Shield, I yelled in ancient Babylonian.

  My defense, cast in a more powerful language, held. But the strength of Ram’s attack forced me back another step. My back pressed against a shelf. I was pinned down with nowhere to move.

  With each strike of his flaming whips, part of my shield crumbled like a wall under a cannon barrage.

  Fuck.

  I couldn’t even attack him because of that damn necklace—and I couldn’t hold a shield for long. I scanned the shelves for something that could help. My gaze caught on something shiny and red.

  On a lower shelf sat a pile of stones with crimson gems in their centers.

  Soulbinders!

  Great, I found them just when I was about to die. If my ghost was trapped on this island with Ram, I’d be the first spirit to find a way to learn how to move things. Then, I’d rip his intestines out through his asshole and punch his balls into his stomach.

  If I wasn’t stuck here, I’d get to see Sammy, Shakes, and Oscar again. See the pain and disappointment when they realize I died trying to bring them back. So much for believing in me and the pride they felt when I saved Shakes.

  Huh. That gave me an idea.

  Ram’s necklace prevented curses from touching him, but I could cast more than curses. I could use the dark power in my veins for something else.

  Through the flames of his curses and the flames of my dying shield, my gaze locked on his. How did I never notice before that we have the same color eyes?

  “You just need a hug,” I said.

  He blinked. “What?”

  “You’re lonely and need a hug. Let me love you, brother!”

  Ram paused for a moment, confused.

  I reached out with the blue-green tendrils of magic to grab every object I could reach, except for the Soulbinders.

  If this didn’t work, I was fucked. Ram held a flaming whip of pure power that was ready to deliver a fatal curse. I held a fading shield and a bunch of hugs.

  “Hug him! Help him!” I yelled.

  Animating inanimate things was my specialty, after all.

  A cat sculpture leaped off a shelf and settled onto Ram’s head. A creepy doll with ragged hair crawled across the floor and hugged his ankle. A half dozen other items leaped off the shelves and wrapped themselves around his arms and legs. A vase tipped over, and its flower grew around his shoulders, hugging him close. A tendril of blue liquid rose from a bottle and wrapped around his arm and waist, pinning his arm to his side.

  “What the fuck?” He tried to move his arms to swing his flaming whips at me, but dozens of tiny hugs held him in place.

  I swooped my claws past his whips and grasped his necklace. “Love him! He needs company. Don’t be lonely anymore, Ramrod!”

  The necklace that blocked curses didn’t block love. It hugged him too, tightening on his throat.

  Ram choked, gasping for breath. He struggled until he freed a hand and grasped the necklace. It burned purple under his touch as he shattered the black stones. They fell to the floor in pieces.

  “Se culci,” I shouted.

  This time, my curse landed.

  Ram’s eyes dropped closed, and he collapsed to the floor in a deep sleep.

  Chapter 30

  A simple sleep spell wouldn’t keep a witch like Ram down for long. So, I searched along the shelves until I found a paralysis stone. I had personally stolen this from an archaeological site. Placing it between Ram’s eyes, I spoke the ancient cuneiform script engraved on the stone’s surface. It glowed, and Ram jerked. Even if he woke, he wouldn’t be able to cause trouble until I came back and removed the stone.

  I turned to go and hesitated. Should I remove his magic? Staring down at the sleeping, paralyzed man, the thought made my stomach turn. It was bad enough I had stolen other people’s magic in battle. It was even worse to do it to someone when they were helpless.

  He might want to lose his abilities, though. He spoke of magic as though it was a curse on his life. Maybe he would be happier without it.

  That wasn’t for me to decide. Stealing his power would be much easier and safer, but it would also be wrong.

  I flew myself back up through the tunnel and raced across the rocky ground toward the docks. My tornado of doom had burned itself out, as spells often did. None of my courageous flying dicks were left, except as pieces of silicon scattered among the rocks.

  Alyssa, blood running down her face from a cut on her temple, faced a wolf and a vampire. The tablets lay in pieces on the ground among unconscious witches and squirming worms that used to be people.

  “Hey, dickweeds,” I yelled.

  The wolf and vampire glanced at me. “Haha, you looked.” I unleashed the dark power within. “Se culci.” The two attackers dropped to the ground, unconscious.

  Alyssa’s gaze met mine as I hurried up to her. “Is he…”

  “He’s out cold.”

  She sighed, her shoulders relaxing away from her ears. “I knew you could do it.”

  “Only because I had help. Um…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you know he loves you? Were you two…”

  “For a while,” Alyssa said, glancing away.

  “Why did you really betray him?”

  Alyssa met my gaze with a steady, challenging stare. “I told you the truth. He put a bounty on your head. Choice of item from the vault for whoever killed you. We might have parted ways, but you were still a sister to me. I wasn’t choosing him over you.”

  My eyes pricked from dust in the air, or maybe allergies to the smell of seawater. Stepping forward, I wrapped my arms around Alyssa’s shoulders.

  “What is this? What are you doing?” she said.

  “Loving you.”

  She sighed and pressed her palms to my back.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t a better sister,” I said.

  “Yeah, you should be.”

  I chuckled and broke off the hug to sling the backpack off my shoulder. I dug inside it for the first aid kit. My hands brushed against the dildo men, and I pressed my lips together against the rising ache. Heartache, not pussy-needs-cock ache. I mean, I had that often too, but not at the moment.

  Alyssa plopped down on the dock with a groan. I knelt before her with the kit to bandage her cut.

  “We need to find a way to shatter Ram’s wards so I can fucking sleep,” she said.

  “I’m sure there’s something in the vault. Then we have a shit ton of witches, wolves, and vamps to uncurse and lock up somewhere. I don’t know what to do with them or Ram.”

  “Hmmm…so you’re saying the vault is now open for anyone to raid?”

  I paused with my fingers taping gauze to her temple. “Did you bring me here so you could gain access to the vault?”

  “Not access. All of it. And yes, though the sister stuff was true, too.”

  I shot her a look.

  “I can have complex motivations!”

  “You can’t take over the vault. Hoarding those items was what made Ram so strong. It was the entire basis of his fucked up little gang and all the fucked up shit we did.”

  “Fine, fine… I can take one or two items though, right? You’re taking the Soulbinders and Spellbinder for your dick men, if they even exist.”

  “You saw them.”

  “I don’t know, June. Those might have been hired help, and you just like talking to dildos. Better than real men because they never go soft or talk back.”

  “That sounds like your perfect man, Al.”

  “I’m not
the one with a backpack full of dicks and a cock in her ass.”

  “A plug is not the same as a cock. Didn’t they teach you that in sex ed?”

  After I bandaged Alyssa, we magicked the cursed and unconscious people into one of the houses—the only one with a door that Julian hadn’t blown up. We sealed it with a ward to keep them inside. I’d reverse the curses later when the prisoners decided not to kill me.

  We headed to the vault and found a Ward Breaker to down Ram’s protective shields over the island. As the wards fell, Alyssa sighed, and her eyes closed as though she were about to come. “Finally, I don’t have to fight his shit anymore. Those are the hardest wards I’ve ever encountered.”

  “Now for the fun part,” I said dryly and turned to Ram, who lay on the floor. He was still except for the slow rise and fall of his chest.

  Alyssa shrugged. “He can wait. Go get your dildo men.”

  My heart leaped, but I kept my expression flat. “We have to clean up here first.”

  “Ram’s not going anywhere; neither are the prisoners or the relics. We’ll be here when you’re done riding them like they’re Splash Mountain.”

  “I’ll ride them like the Tea Cups, just for you.”

  I collected the Soulbinders and Spellbinder from the vault and returned to my cabin on the ship. The first time I had cast the soulbinding, I didn’t have specific people in mind. That was why it hadn’t worked until I read Love Blooms and activated the mate spell.

  This time, I knew exactly who I was summoning. I laid out the men’s clothes with their dildos resting on top. Using an object that belonged to the person helped draw in their ghost. I crafted the pentagram and placed the Soulbinders at the edges with the Spellbinder in the center.

  Raising the dead was dark magic by most people’s standards. Forbidden magic. But that was fine. I opened my dam and let my power rush out to dance and play. I laughed as I worked this taboo spell. Laughed from the exultation of power and darkness flooding through my veins. The words bubbled from my lips like giggling joy.

  As the spell ended and the power ebbed back into its cavern inside me, I pried my eyes open.