We were no longer alone.
And the weather was turning.
Any languid pleasure disappeared. My joy was there, a bubbling remnant of relief that came from the bond being completed between us, but also that shushing noise meant one thing and one thing only—the Fae were on their way.
A lot of them.
And those funnels in the sky? Those dark black vortexes that appeared out of nowhere in the navy expanse around us?
I’d seen them before.
The AFata were trying to take her away from us.
Within a flash, I dressed us, making sure she was covered from head to toe in leather to hopefully protect her from blades.
“What is it?” she rasped, her eyes peering into mine, her confusion and curiosity evident.
“They’re here for you,” I grated out, my wrath making it hard to speak clearly.
The rage that overtook me was like the desperate fury that had made me need her. The two were the sides of the same coin, and as I stared out, I knew I’d give my life to make sure hers was safe.
Almost like she’d read my mind, her hands came to my jaw. She urged me to stare at her and not at the twisting funnels that appeared from out of nowhere, duplicating in number every time I looked. When she dragged my focus her way, she murmured, “Concentrate on keeping yourself safe. I’ll be well.”
There was an aged wisdom about her tone, about her words that put me on edge. It was like by touching the meteor, she’d swallowed a pill that had revealed too much knowledge to her, and had made her excessively aware of what was going on in the Earth.
She smiled at me, leaned down, and pressed a kiss to my lips. The next time I opened my eyes, I was encompassed in the glow of her magic, and I could hear Matt and Seph grunting as she drew them closer.
“Riel! What the Sol are you doing?” Matt snarled, struggling to fight the glow so he could take off to surveil the area, and ascertain which direction that ‘shushing’ noise was coming from. It was a sound that always preempted disaster for whoever was on the receiving end of a battalion’s attention, and oddly enough, was enough of a tell to give the intended victim or victims a warning.
Back in the day, it had been said that certain battalions could inspire heart attacks in humans who knew the skills of the Fae warriors in their region.
I wasn’t scared, though. I was furious.
And Riel wasn’t helping.
With her Virgo tightly around her, I could sense an ease about her. In her eyes, there was no tension or fear, just a resolve that should have made any of our enemies fear her.
“Help me. I need a better visual,” she instructed, retracting her wings for ease so I could take her in my arms. She pressed her feet onto mine as we twisted around so she could stare out at the source of the funnels.
I wasn’t sure why her magic calmed me, but it did, and it enabled me to see something I hadn’t seen before—there was a pattern to the funnels. They didn’t just pop up out of nowhere, growing in fury as they merged with the current weather patterns. Indeed, there was a method to the madness.
A single funnel dropped before it spawned four smaller ones that twirled in a circle at each quarter-hour point on a clock. Those four were then part of a quadrant of four more, so each quadrant housed sixteen small funnels, and with five quadrants? Sweet Sol, that was a lot of wind brewing.
A curious helplessness filled me as I recognized that she didn’t need my help, didn’t need her Virgos’ aid. If anything, she was keeping us safe, and what that did to my pride, I wasn’t sure. Yeah, I was a modern Fae male, but even we needed to feel useful. Having her shield me wasn’t exactly how I’d figured our dynamic would pan out.
Because it was a stupid train of thought, chauvinistic too, I kept my brain focused on the outer threat. Just because she was keeping us close now didn’t mean she’d be able to in a battle.
This was, literally, the calm before the storm.
She raised her hand, her blood-stained, gold-tipped nails pointing upwards. All around her, the silvery-white flecks in the glow ceased aimlessly floating, and instead, seemed to be attracted to each pointy nail. Within seconds, tiny phalanxes of platinum-esque metal levitated above the tips. She shifted her arm back, then hurled it forward as though she were throwing a ball.
My eyes widened in surprise as the tiny bullet-like contraptions were projected forward. She did it several times with both arms, hurling the projectiles at the funnels. I wasn’t sure what she was doing or whether it was working, but when the pink glow around us began to pulsate, I called out, “What the Sol are you doing, Riel?”
“Calling the magic to me,” she murmured easily, her tone that of her telling me she was taking out the trash.
Before I could ask her to clarify what in Gaia that meant, she raised her palms and drew her fingers back until she made a clawing motion. With that gesture, I gasped as the funnels ceased moving within their quadrant and hurtled toward us.
I’d admit to flinching as the brewing tornados headed our way, but instead of drawing us into their vortexes, we were buffeted by them, shielded by them on all sides.
The noise was worse than a rock concert. My ears ached with the roaring of the wind that she seemed to have under her control. There was no way in Sol I could hear the shushing of the dozens of wings belonging to Fae warriors heading our way, so we were essentially blind.
At least I was, and I figured Matt and Seph were too. She somehow knew what the Sol was happening, and just as my ears acclimated to the roaring of the wind, the funnels began separating themselves from us, breaking away as she called on the magic once more, creating more of the tiny projectiles and hurling them forth. Each time she did so, five funnels moved, breaking free, hurtling through time and space toward her enemy.
With a small window now, I saw the battalion. Saw them flying toward us at breakneck speed, unafraid of what she could do… because they didn’t know what she was capable of yet.
What had Instructor Leopold said that day when we’d first encountered this magic?
It’s just a bit of wind.
My brethren were about to learn that witch wind was nothing compared to what my mate could wield.
❖
Riel
I’d acted on instinct before.
It wasn’t the first time in my life my gut had spoken to me. That weird shiver down my back when I felt a certain someone was watching me. The instinct to hurry down a darkened corridor in case someone might stop me. Women lived with threats every day, threats men couldn’t ever understand. We relied on our instincts in ways they’d never be able to comprehend either, so it wasn’t the first time I’d allowed them free rein.
But when I realized we had two threats to deal with, I knew exactly what to do.
Neutralize one with the other.
It was amazing what the meteor had done to me. I couldn’t say it opened my eyes, because I didn’t know what it had done. Not specifically, at any rate. How could I? I’d absorbed the radiation and the powers meant for millions. That caused an adverse effect that was impossible to discount or to understand.
But what I could say was that the first time I’d seen these funnels and had been attacked by them, I’d felt certain they were going to kill me. Of course, that hadn’t been the AFata’s intention. Their magic had been cast to bring me to them, but because I was witch born, my magic distorted their original spells and had it reacting badly around me.
Which meant I’d been in danger.
Today, I wasn’t in danger. Whoever was casting the funnels was. As were the Fae warriors who thought they could take me from my ancestral home, steal me away so they could use me.
The Fae had a habit of collecting witches.
What was one more oddity in their cirque du freak? It didn’t matter that I was Fae, that I had wings. I knew that without even having to ask.
I was something to abuse. Something to manipulate and use. They’d do to me as they’d done to all witchkind for millenn
ia—pilfer what wasn’t theirs to take.
The interesting thing about the way my magic manifested now was the tiny flecks of metal. Before the Academy, my magic hadn’t manifested at all. Then, the glow had been tangible, but now? It had weapons, weapons I used to attack the warriors.
Each Fae warrior was coated in tiny particles of magic, thanks to the dust they used to trap witch magic so they could use it in their day-to-day life. My projectiles weren’t magnetized, but I knew they’d be attracted to the magic coating the Fae—like called to like as always.
From a distance, I watched as the funnels snapped up each warrior. Each one released a different noise—a shriek, a yell, a curse. Each noise traveled to me, telling me that they were captured. I didn’t stop until every single warrior—over seventy-two in total—was trapped within a funnel of their own.
“It’s time to land,” I rasped, squeezing Daniel’s hand as I launched myself from his arms.
I let myself be twirled around in the sky, not calling on my wings until I could see the individual rows of tobacco plants in the farm below me, and not just one big blur of green. Then, and only then, did I allow myself to fly to safety. The wind buffeted me into a graceful glide, helping me as I landed neatly in the front yard of the ramshackle farmhouse.
“What the Sol were you doing?” my grandmother yelled at me the second I was on the ground.
“Freefalling,” Linford replied, grabbing her and curving his arm around her shoulder. “She was safe.”
I shot him an appreciative look, amused when I saw his eyes were twinkling at me in understanding—the wingless would never understand the joys of what I’d just done.
Apparently, my men didn’t either.
They were scowling at me as they landed, their wings fluttering with their outrage as they came to a halt in front of me.
“Was that necessary?” Seph blurted out.
I reached up to pat his cheek. “Don’t be jealous. I’ll Claim you as soon as this is done.”
He blinked. “This has nothing to do—”
My grin was swift. “Of course it does.” My eyes darkened as my amusement was swallowed whole by irritation. “They’ll pay for disturbing our Claiming.”
His frown lessened some, but he shook his head. “You’re not strong enough to pull these stunts.”
“Wanna bet?” I retorted, cocking a brow at him. “I wasn’t strong enough. Now I am.”
The glow protected me, my magic was a shield I could never begin to describe because it hadn’t been like this just a few days before. How could I explain something that made no sense? How could I reason something I didn’t know how to justify?
I couldn’t, so I didn’t.
I didn’t waste words or time.
Instead, I twisted around to face the sea of funnels that undoubtedly had every meteorologist the world over gaping at the unnatural phenomena—even scientists who knew about witches and their affinity at meddling with the weather would be aghast at this sight.
“What are you going to do with them?” Matthew asked me.
“Use them as leverage,” I told him, raising my palms outward once more and drawing my fingers in a come-hither motion.
At once, the funnels moved toward me.
“The plants!” my grandmother shrieked, and I grimaced, realizing that if I followed through with my plan, they’d be destroyed.
With an internal shrug, I allowed the funnels to release their quarry. Though they’d only been within the vortexes for a short span of time, a few moments would be enough to knock anyone out, especially with the speed of the tornados.
As the warriors dropped like dead weights, I let them fall, only calling on the wind, at the final moment, to let them drift softly to the ground.
I lined them up in a neat row and headed over to them. Seventy-two males had thought to take me captive this day, and not a single one had gotten close enough to me to even damage a hair on my head.
As I strolled forward, Matt grabbed my arm. “What’s the plan?”
“We’re going to call on mine and Seph’s new talent.”
“You’re going to petrify them into platinum?” Daniel rasped, his eyes widening.
“Yes,” I murmured. “But don’t worry, I can bring them out of it.”
“How do you know?” my grandmother inquired, her brow arched.
“Because I can take away what I give.”
Her eyes flared and I noticed her flinch as she huddled back into Linford’s arms. That I’d scared her with my words was a given. What I’d just declared was impossible, and yet I knew it was well within the realm of my abilities.
I grabbed Matt’s wrist and, after squeezing it gently, said, “Let me go.” His sigh was one thing, but I saw the guilt in his eyes. “They were going to take us captive, Matt. You owe them no loyalty.”
“My brothers will be amid the battalion,” Seph rasped. “They were there in Hawaii. I see no reason why this won’t be the same battalion.”
I felt merciless when I argued, “They were going to detain us. Do you want that? Do you want them to run experiments on us? To use us as they’ve used witches since time began?”
“We helped witches,” Linford corrected. “You were going crazy from too much power. Looks like it’s starting in you, my girl.”
I shook my head. “Why? Because I’m thinking clearly and being rational? I tell you true—I won’t harm the warriors, but they would harm us.”
“You know she’s right, Linford,” my grandmother muttered, her hands clinging to her Virgo mate’s. I had to wonder at their bond. I knew they hadn’t completed the Claiming, couldn’t since the Virgo bond was a collective, until the Claiming when it turned individual, but it seemed as though they were rebelling against that ‘law,’ or just living outside of its borders.
“Show me what you will do, Granddaughter,” Linford ordered.
I didn’t appreciate his imperious tones, but I was used to obeying my Elders—or getting a slap around the ear for my pains. With a huff, I complied. I knew they wouldn’t be satisfied with a flower, as had been the way before. They needed something conscious too.
As I thought about my intentions, I held out my palm, and a small vortex started there. I called on the elements as I had always done, except this time I was channeling into a whole different collection of elements.
I’d transcended the simple four of earth, fire, water, and air, and had merged into the world of the periodic table. That was the only way I could describe it. That was how I did what I did, and those bits and pieces of naturally occurring elements were glued together by a Sol-ton of magic which could only be a gift from Gaia herself.
On my palm, a furry tarantula appeared. She was big and hairy, and I reached up and carefully ran my finger along her left hind leg. I knew from experience that gentle touch calmed the furry munchkins.
“Is she petting a spider?” Dan whispered to Seph.
I shot him a look. “A tarantula,” I corrected.
My grandmother shuddered. “I’d hoped you’d have grown out of that habit.”
“What? Of having spiders for pets?” My lips curved. “I did. When I moved to LA.” My life hadn’t exactly accommodated pets. Even ones that lived in terrariums. I’d been too busy for friendships outside of work, and even they’d been tense thanks to the competitive nature of the fashion industry, and boyfriends had been out of the picture too—casual hookups were all I’d had time for.
Funny, wasn’t it? That only now I picked up on how lonely I’d been.
A soft huff escaped me at the thought, and I raised my arm and let the tarantula move up and down it. There was always a bite risk, but I didn’t mind. It wouldn’t be the first bite I’d had.
“You had a spider as a pet?”
“Several, over the years,” I told Seph with a grin. When he pulled a face, I just shook my head at him. “Different strokes for different folks.”
Seph rolled his eyes. “Okay, so what’s the plan?”
“Grandmother, you can attest to how much I love tarantulas, correct?”
“Yes.” She grimaced. “I can.”
“Okay.” I sucked in a breath and stroked the creature’s hind leg once more. Except this time, my intent was different, and it was all about intent. That’s what I was understanding.
If I intended harm, I could do harm.
If I intended peace, I would make peace.
Within seconds, the metal that was a part of my magic overtook the little beast. It was immortalized in the substance until my intent changed, and when I touched the spider once more, it retracted into the furry little beast it had always been.
Of course, for messing with it, it bit me. I winced but took it as just punishment.
“Rather fitting considering what the warriors will do to you when you wake them up,” Linford commented dryly, eying the bite.
I called on more elements, silica this time, and crafted a rudimentary terrarium to house the spider in. It didn’t take kindly to its prison, but I couldn’t let it roam around the farm—only Sol knew if it might take a liking to the crop.
“That won’t keep it contained,” my grandmother advised grimly, a look of disgust on her face. No one in my house had been happy when I’d found a terrarium at a nearby garage sale, and had then saved up for my first Tarantula—Ninny. I’d never really been a cat or a dog kind of girl.
“I know, but it will for a while, and that’s all I need.” I allowed the wind to carry the box through the open doorway and into the kitchen. The wind, ever polite, closed the door behind it. The second it was shut, my grandmother shuddered.
“She’ll be out before you know it.”
Wincing, because she wasn’t wrong, I mumbled, “I know. Remind me to get her proper equipment.”
Dan grunted. “You mean we’re keeping her?”
My lips twitched. “Of course.”
“Great. Just great,” he muttered, and I patted his arm in mock commiseration.
“It’s a hard life,” I teased.
His eyes were on the warriors. “And it’s about to get a lot harder.”
The Ascended: The Eight Wings Collection Page 46
