Free Spirit: Book Two of The Bound Spirit Series

by H. A. Wills

  “What’s cool is that’s how he taught himself to do tattoos,” Felix extols with pride. “I didn’t know at the time, obviously, but he’d practice, shift, then he’d have a fresh canvas to work on.”

  I do my best to ignore how painful it probably was to stab himself repeatedly for something he knew would be gone as soon as he finished, and marvel a bit at his ingenuity to use his healing abilities to benefit his art.

  “I wonder if I’m capable of getting tattoos or would I heal too fast for the ink to set?” I ponder out loud.

  Nolan tips his head to the side, considering. Now that his arm is safely blocked from view, his hand goes back into his pocket. “From what I saw last night, I’m guessing no. With that burn, the damaged skin didn’t flake off, it was like it was never burned in the first place.”

  “Yeah, I’m going to have to agree,” Felix adds, bobbing his head “Or if you can, one deep scratch and you have a line of healed skin right through it. Actually, that might be kind of cool.”

  As we talk about my healing abilities and what we’d have to do to make the tattoo stay, we more hang around the elliptical machines than use them. I go the extra step of standing on one of them, but I don’t really do more than the occasional rotation.

  Donovan comes strolling in, looks at the three of us, and shakes his head. He’s now wearing black workout shorts and a matching sleeveless tank that I’m pretty sure I can visibly count his abs in.

  With exasperation that rivals Kaleb, he asks, “Did you seriously just stand there while I was gone?”

  “Nope, I totally did a full workout,” Felix answers with a huge grin. He drops to the ground and starts doing pushups. “Look I can do them one handed now!”

  “Smartass,” he grunts back, pressing his lips together to keep from smiling.

  “So, how exactly am I helping Callie today?” Nolan questions, his expression somewhere between concern and a model pout that accents the sharpness of his cheekbones. “I need this face bruise free.”

  “Don’t worry. Callie won’t be punching you in the face.” Donovan smirks. He walks over, pats Nolan on the shoulder, before resting his hand on the back of Nolan’s neck, like he’s keeping him from running away. “She’ll be throwing you to the ground and grappling you into submission.”

  Nolan squints up at Donovan. “I have mixed feelings about this.”

  “Too bad. It’s gotta be you. You’re the last man standing,” he replies without remorse.

  “Not for long,” Felix chuckles under his breath.

  ∞∞∞

  For the first half of my session, Nolan is excused to do an actual workout and Felix hangs out with him. I can’t hear what they talk about, but Felix tends to gesture wildly as he speaks, appearing to pantomime shapes and actions while Nolan nods along.

  Meanwhile, Donovan uses the aforementioned heavy bag, important locations to aim for marked off in tape, to teach me how to stand, move, punch and kick without falling on my ass.

  The music has shifted to a rock song that’s both harsh and seductive. The beats roll together with promises of pleasure and pain that draws the listener willingly to a darkness that only offers danger. The room feels warm, the air thick with a moist heat that has started to fog the tops of the windows.

  “With Muay Thai, you want your hips facing forward,” Donovan instructs from behind me, his large hands encasing both of my hips and moving them to the correct direction. “Normally, having the trunk of your body facing this way makes you a much larger target, but how you move will help negate that. Also, you’re so small, you’re still kind of a hard target.”

  He chuckles, his breath playing with the loose strands that have fallen out of my ponytail. There’s no gruffness to his tone, and it gentles the gravel in his voice to something far smoother that makes my heart skip.

  The song mixed with Donovan’s nearness has my skin feeling hot and tight against my bones. Awareness tingles through me and leaves me struggling to actually take in what he’s saying.

  “Face forward. Got it,” I chirp.

  “Then you shift your weight back and forth between each foot,” he continues, rocking my hips to guide me. “This makes it harder for your opponent to trip you, because you can easily lift your leg out of the way.”

  From there, he reaches around to my forearms, his fingers encircling around them, and pulls in and out, while explaining, “Unlike boxing, you want your arms wider apart. With a swipe of your arm, you can push away any punches coming at your face, and it also allows you to quickly block any blows to your body by pulling your elbow down and your leg up.”

  With each mentioned action, he leads my body through the motion, and it grows difficult to breathe. A hot flush burns my skin, but this time not from embarrassment. I have to learn these moves fast if only to keep myself from spontaneously combusting.

  Once I’m able to stand correctly, Donovan leads me through punches and kicks. Unlike the guys earlier, I’m wearing MMA gloves that are surprisingly small enough to fit my hands and padded guards down my shins. I aim for the taped targets, and he patiently corrects my form when needed and is quick to catch me if I lose my balance. This is a side of Donovan that I feel few people get to see, and I’m both sad and lucky because of it.

  By the time we’re done, I’m panting from exertion and dripping with sweat. I pull my sweater up over my head and use it to wipe at my face. My T-shirt has dark stains where it sticks to my body.

  “Good, now that you’ve finished learning form, get some water and walk around some, then we’ll start on grapples and throws,” Donovan announces with a smile. “You can take off the gloves and pads for this part.”

  Luckily, the music switched a while back to something more light and upbeat that was full of wishes to live your life to the fullest. With each gasping breath, his earlier charm diminishes, but I do as he says. I retrieve a bottle of water from the mini fridge, then pace back and forth to keep my muscles loose as I sip at my water.

  Nolan is already standing there, sweaty and chugging water. He dumps the last bit over his head, then grabs one of the white towels to dry himself off. He’s somewhere around nine inches taller than me and probably a good sixty pounds heavier than me. I have no clue how I’m supposed to throw Nolan anywhere, let alone to the ground.

  Felix is leaning against the wall with a smirk. “Now the show begins. Watching Callie throw you to the floor is going to be awesome. It’s too bad I can’t eat popcorn, because this is definitely a popcorn moment.”

  “You’re enjoying this too much,” Nolan comments while he rolls his head from one side to the other.

  “No such thing,” he snickers back.

  “Felix is right,” Donovan taunts from the gray mat. “Come on you two. It’s time for Nolan to kiss some mat.”

  “Not my kind of kissing,” Nolan retorts as he heads over, tossing the empty bottle into a bin next to the fridge.

  As I follow him over to the mat, I can’t tell if I’m nervous or emboldened with their surety that I’ll be able to actually knock Nolan down.

  Felix parks himself on the open space nearby, leaning back on his hands with a way too excited expression on his face.

  “Again, today is about you going through the different moves so you get a feel for what you’ll be learning,” Donovan explains, while positioning Nolan in the middle of the mat. “We’ll be going slow, and don’t worry if things feel awkward. It’ll get easier through repetition.”

  “Repetition?” Nolan questions with a quirked brow. “As in, I’ll be reprising the role of grapple dummy? Is this payback for that time I pretended you KO’d me before you actually hit me?”

  “It is now,” Donovan counters with a smirk. “Now quit your complaining, or I’ll be the one knocking you on your ass and have Callie watch.”

  “There’s a naughty joke in there somewhere,” Felix teases.

  “That’s what she said,” Nolan snorts.

  “Aw man, that’s no way to talk about you
rself,” Donovan ribs. “It’s not that much of a joke.”

  Nolan presses a hand to his chest, like he’s experienced a deep wound. “Now you’ve just gone too far.”

  “Also, what she said,” Felix hoots.

  “Hey, some things can’t be helped,” Nolan leers with a suggestive grin.

  I groan. Now I know why Kaleb always looks like he’s praying for patience.

  “This ‘she’ is tired and sweaty, so are we doing this or not?” I interject with my hands on my hips. “Because I’d like to get out of these sticky clothes and into a hot shower sometime in the near future.”

  Three sets of eyes turn and simply blink at me for a long moment, and I have a sinking feeling I’ve said something innuendo-y that I’m not quite catching.

  Donovan is the first to recover from his stupefied blinking. “Right-- so uh, first, we’ll focus on attacks from behind.”

  Felix kind of choke laughs, his face scrunching together like he’s trying really hard not to make another snarky joke, and Nolan rolls his lips while he shakes silently with laughter.

  Donovan sighs and points to a spot on the mat. “Come stand over here with your back facing Nolan.”

  I stand where instructed, and Felix gives me a thumbs-up.

  “With opponents bigger than you, one of the ways they’ll try to incapacitate you is by literally lifting you off the ground, so reaction time is key,” Donovan states, getting back into training instructor mode. “Nolan is going to wrap his arms around your waist to try and pick you up, but he has to bend over to do that.”

  Nolan does as instructed and bends over to try and pick me up, his forearms feeling like steel bands against my stomach, and he stays in mid-motion for the next direction. Despite wiping himself down, water droplets drip from his hair onto my back, and there’s a damp heat where our bodies touch.

  I’m pretty sure Nolan’s phone is mocking me, because another sultry song with gritty riffs starts playing, making me once again hyper aware of one of the boys pressed against me. I get it, phone. You don’t have to rub it in!

  “When he grabs you, you need to spread your stance so his foot is between yours.” Donovan squats down in front of me and helps me move my feet into position. “Now, bend at the waist, grab him by the ankle, and pull up.”

  I bend over, which feels as awkward as I expected with Nolan’s groin against my ass, grab the back of Nolan’s right ankle with both hands, and give a sharp tug. Sure enough, Nolan goes down, though it isn’t a smooth descent, and I end up going down right along with him.

  He makes a soft “oof” noise as all of my bodyweight lands right on his stomach, and I flop backwards.

  “You did it!” Felix cheers, kindly ignoring the fact I went down, too.

  Donovan sighs. “Normally that move is much faster, so you’re less likely to go down with your opponent, because he’ll be too busy trying to break his fall.”

  “It seemed to have worked to me,” Nolan comments with an over-exaggerated wheeze. “I’m on the ground and feeling fairly submissive.”

  My mind goes blank, as I have no idea how to handle that sentence.

  Donovan purses his lips, shakes his head, then says, “Great, then while you’re down there we’ll work on chokeholds.”

  From there it’s a never-ending sparring match of innuendos and jokes between the three of them, while I learn how to spin, twist, and bend my way out of being overpowered by Nolan. By the time we’re finished, I can’t breathe because I’m laughing too hard and tomato red, which I can thankfully blame on the workout.

  “Stop-- please. I can’t take anymore,” I gasp, after Felix makes a comment about how he’s pretty sure my legs shouldn’t be able to bend that way.

  “That’s my line,” Nolan coughs, hands curled around my thighs that currently have him in a loose chokehold. “Not that I’m complaining. Honestly, I’m reconsidering my position on being the grapple dummy.”

  “Don’t say it,” I cry before someone can make a joke about the many positions Nolan might be considering.

  That leads to grins all around. I unravel from around Nolan, and he helps me back to my feet.

  “Okay, I think you’ve learned enough for one day,” Donovan says to my great relief.

  “Yes!” I cheer. “Finally, food then shower.”

  “I’m surprised it isn’t the other way around,” Nolan comments, walking over to grab us water, a couple more towels, and to retrieve the evil phone.

  “It would’ve been an hour ago. Now, I’m starving,” I reply, placing both of my hands on my gurgling belly. “Speaking of food, wasn’t Kaleb putting lunch together a while ago?”

  “Knowing him, there’s probably everything ready to make sandwiches, and he has his nose buried in a book,” Donovan answers while we head toward the door, filing out one at a time with Felix in the lead.

  Nolan grabs my arm, stopping me, and lets the others get ahead of us.

  “We should take a selfie to remember our first session as grappler and grapple dummy,” he says with a grin.

  “Right now?” I whine, looking down at my sweat drenched clothes. “I look gross.”

  “You’re beautiful,” he assures, causing little butterflies to dance in my stomach. He wraps one arm around my waist while holding his phone up for the picture with the other. “Now say ‘Nolan is the best!’”

  I laugh and roll my eyes. “You’re ridiculous.”

  His grin grows, and he shakes his phone to illustrate he’s waiting, our sweaty, red-faced reflections bouncing around on the screen.

  Leaning my head against his shoulder, I smile up at the camera, and he quickly takes the photo.

  “Perfect,” he beams, stepping back, and thumbs at his phone before putting it back in his pocket.

  My heart grows soft, and I feel silly being so sentimental, but it’s our first picture together. Hopefully, the first of many pictures with the guys. Each one capturing a new happy memory for me to cherish.

  Attempting nonchalance, I ask, “Can I get a copy?”

  Nolan shrugs good-naturedly. “Sure. I’ll text it to you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Hey, you guys coming?” Donovan bellows from down the hall, when he notices we’re missing.

  Nolan flashes a conspiratorial wink, then runs ahead of me-- my only warning that apparently we’re racing to catch up.

  “No fair!” I cry, breathless when I reach them, while the three of them laugh.

  We find Kaleb exactly as Donovan expected, sitting at a table on the veranda, empty plate and cup beside him, and he’s reading a thick tome in a language I don’t recognize, though I’m pretty sure it isn’t Latin. How many languages does he know?

  We all put together our own sandwiches filled with artisan meats, cheeses, and organic vegetables. Even for a simple meal, there’s a gourmet flair to it, I think to myself, shaking my head.

  All of us eventually sit alongside Kaleb, who looks up long enough to acknowledge us, before going back to his book. The air is cold, but feels nice on my flushed skin.

  Between bites, Donovan advises me to start doing quick runs in the morning or evening to build up endurance-- a few miles should be good-- which I laugh at until I realize he’s serious. With a cheeky smile, Felix gallantly offers to run with me.

  Despite being sweaty and worn out, I feel better-- stronger-- and I know that has a lot to do with what I’ve learned today. Not only the physical moves to defend myself, but the security that these guys are real friends who will stand by me.

  A sadness creeps over me thinking of who’s missing from our merry band and why. I know Nolan warned me to stay out of it, but thinking of Connor reminds me of all the times I was trapped in the basement too damaged to hope for help. I’m supposed to be a witch that can do the impossible, and when my magic is free, I’m going to find a way to save him. I’ll be the hope he’s given up on.

  Chapter 3

  Callie

  After lunch, Donovan and Kaleb drop me off
at my house before heading home. Felix decided to stay and hang out at Nolan’s, letting me know that he’ll be over later tonight. Honestly, I think my aunt intimidates him a bit now that she knows he’s haunting us, though why, I have no idea.

  “That arse-licking slag can just bloody well sod off,” is the first thing I hear when entering through the front door. “Who the hell does she think she is?”

  “Aunt Mildred, are you okay?” I yell, surprised to hear the brash insults coming from my normally well-collected aunt.

  I turn to hang my red sweater in the coat closet, then I remember how much I’ve sweated in it, and decide it definitely needs a wash before school tomorrow.

  “Then go to the council,” Mildred sneers in a sing-songy voice, sounding like she’s probably in her office. “You’d think witches that live outside of the council would have some backbone, but no-- scared of her own bloody shadow! Well, if she’s the best they have, then I don’t need her anyway. Couldn’t magic her way out of a paper cup!”

  Ouch! I don’t think her meeting with the coven went well.

  There’s sounds of clanging pans and running water coming from the kitchen, and I spin around, worried who else might be in the house. My brain short circuits and my sweater falls from my fingertips, because it’s not someone in the kitchen-- it’s somethings.

  Fucking Fantasia is being reenacted in the damn kitchen. The dirty pans from this morning float just above the sink with a sponge scrubbing vigorously at some of the stuck on food, while the plates rinse themselves then line up in the drying rack. There’s a broom and dustpan sweeping away, followed by a mop and soap bucket. Rags wipe down the granite counters and float over to the trash can to shake out any food particles they’ve collected.

  Is it ‘Take the blinders off of Callie’ day?

  I know magic is real. Hell, I made it rain, created gale force winds, blew-up a tree, and created a massive bonfire, just because I was emotional, but this-- this is the first time I’ve seen real magic. Like straight out of Harry Potter magic.