“Good morning, gorgeous.” Callen’s voice rumbles up my spine, settles in the spot deep below my belly. In the two years we’ve been dating—two years longer than I’ve bothered dating anyone else—I’ve never complained about him sleeping over.
Sure, he hogs the covers, keeps me up later than I should, and sometimes snores. But that voice. First thing in the morning? Yeah, gets my day started right.
“Mm,” I moan, not wanting to get out of bed. “It is now?” I wiggle my ass against his front. “Wanna make it even better?”
He kisses me on the neck, which isn’t fair. I know what he’s going to say next. Callen Rothchester is a lot of things. Predictable is at the top of the list. It’s why I chose him. Why I own a small antique broker business with a storefront in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Why I changed my name from Kate Dark to Katelyn Black.
Predictability. If things are always as they should be, then I know exactly what to expect. Can control the outcome.
Control and a sense of normalcy are what I crave above all else. Above accessing the limitless pool of magick just under the surface. An oil slick in my veins.
I know the price of accessing that magick. Have seen the damage it caused firsthand. I’ve felt the poisonous grip of power infecting who I was in an attempt to replace me with a darkness so deep, so infinite, there would be no end.
If that kind of darkness were ever to reach Earth…well, then the deal I’d made to save the only person I’ve ever truly cared about—my best friend—will have been for nothing.
Because that’s what would be left. Nothing.
“Sorry, babe. I’ve gotta get home, get ready to go to work.” Callen’s sexy voice brings me back to the present, disrupts the call of the darkness inside that begs me to take just a taste. It would silence it for a bit if he’d give me what I want. A release of pent-up energy.
“You know, you’d have more time in the morning to get ready if you’d just keep some of your stuff here,” I say, meaning those words, and not meaning them at the same time.
I like Callen. I do. Being a personal trainer, he’s ripped. He’s also great in bed and makes a mean omelet. But I don’t love him. I’m not even sure Devil-spawn can love in that way. No, the warmth between my thighs and the sense of peace and balance he brings me are the best I can do. For me, that’s pretty good.
“Yeah, if only you meant that.” He gives me another kiss, then kicks off the covers and heads to the bathroom.
“You know me too well,” I mutter as the bathroom door closes.
It’s a thought that makes me both content and anxious. I’m practiced at keeping everyone at arm’s length, or further, showing just enough of myself to draw in the right kind of people. Mundane people. People who will never know what I truly am.
It’s how I landed Callen. How I got the loan to start my business, even if, on paper, I’m worth nothing. How I’ve managed to live on my own ever since I was thirteen.
Call it a gift. Or maybe it’s the Dark in me. Dear Ol’ Dad is known to be a charmer.
Succumbing to the routine of Mondays, I get out of bed and head straight for the coffee pot. The thick, black liquid beckons me like a vampire to a blood sacrifice. And, because it’s what people who are good and kind do, I make Callen a cup to go.
See? I’m perfectly fine girlfriend material, despite what the Wyka community says about my kind.
In zero rush to open my shop, I take my time getting ready. Most of it is spent staring in the mirror at my face, my hair, and my curves. My mother used to tell me everything would change once I turned eighteen and claimed my birthright. My hair. My eyes. Even my flesh.
She was wrong. Tomorrow is my twenty-fifth birthday. So far, so good. Granted, I haven’t touched magick since I was thirteen, refused to do the coming-of-age ritual every witch must do. I don’t even have a coven, and after what happened in the past, I have zero desire to find one.
Some things should never be released. Some family traditions are meant to die.
My denial of my true self, of my familial magick, has everything to do with why I’ve never changed. If me living as a mundane keeps me from his clutches, I’ll never touch magick again. Magick equals chaos. Chaos is unacceptable for a control-freak like me.
Doesn’t matter that the urge has only gotten stronger every day since my eighteenth birthday. If I’m brutally honest, since the day I summoned Dad. Sometimes, I can’t sleep because of the constant hissing of voices calling my name, begging me to take just one sip from the well of sacrilege. I’m strong. Strong enough to say no. For now.
Also, I do yoga, meditate, long-distance run, and take CrossFit class twice a week, my way of blowing off the steam building pressure-cooker style in the space between my DNA. I’m managing the urges just fine. And I enjoy the outlet. Whatever it takes to live a normal life, with a normal boyfriend, in normal obscurity.
He can’t corrupt what he can’t find.
Pulling around the back of my storefront, I park in my assigned spot. Or, I would, if some asshole Beemer weren’t in my space. Luckily, it’s early enough in the day that there’s still visitor parking. I snag the last of the free spots and whip out my cell to dial the towing company number on the sign that clearly marks my spot as designated.
If I were a full Priestess, I could snap my fingers and turn this stupid car into a toad. Probably.
I sigh when I push open my car door. The intoxicating aroma from the fudge shop next door entices my sugar-addicted sweet tooth to buy just one piece. Or maybe one pound.
Why the hell did you lease the space next to a fudge shop? My hips and thighs demand answers. I don’t have any good ones.
The receptionist at the towing company picks up as I make my way to my friendly chocolate neighbor. I give him the make and model of the offending vehicle. They tell me someone will be there in twenty.
“Good morning, Katelyn.” Samir smiles as he holds open the back door of his shop so I can slip inside and buy yet more fudge I don’t need. After I finished the peanut butter flavored brick I’d bought last week, I swore to Callen that was my last pound.
Oh, well. What he doesn’t know…
“I see someone parked in your spot.” Samir flicks his chin toward the black BMW.
I shake the phone still in my hand, before putting it into my purse. “Not for long.”
“You know what will make you feel better?” Samir leads me toward the display case.
“A pound of caramel mocha,” I answer, already eyeing the smooth, velvety confection.
After swearing Samir to secrecy—just in case Callen stops by to check on my broken promise to kick my sugar habit—I buy two pounds and have Samir carve up one to put in my storefront for customers. There’s something about free chocolate that makes people spend more money than they usually would.
Leaving Samir’s through the front door as opposed to the back the way I came is easier. First: he’s now officially open. Second: my front door is close to his. Problem is, my hands are now full of bags of fudge, which makes fishing out my keys from my purse a near impossible task.
It’s why I don’t notice the man in the business suit standing right in front of my door.
“Can I give you a hand?” says the kind of voice meant for making sinners of saints.
A sound—a cross between stepping on a mouse and the dying squeak of a deflating balloon—escapes my lips. I get enough air to make a startled cat jealous, and with the same grace as a feline familiar, manage to land on my feet.
So does the fudge.
At least, it was on a collision course with my shoes. Right now, the tiny bags housing the sugary pillows of perfection are suspended, midair. Not a damn thing holding them up except magick.
I do a quick scan to make sure it isn’t me doing magick by accident. It’s damn near impossible to tell because my heart is beating fast enough to explode, the increase in blood pressure making my entire body tingle.
There’s a pull when using magick, an eddyi
ng undercurrent that riptides the blood, sucks you in until the demand to use more is greater than your ability to resist. It was like that the one time I tapped into the source, back when I was thirteen.
A quick secondary scan tells me I’m still me, the chastity belt on my magick firmly in place. That must mean…
My head whips up, my gaze locking on the man with the voice. Hell, I shouldn’t have looked.
You know the saying tall, dark, and handsome? Yeah, it was created to define him. Skin smoother than the fudge I just bought, and just as dark, makes me rethink my sugar addiction. I could easily trade it in for a taste of him.
His dark, curly hair is shaved close to the scalp, same as the hair on his face, showcasing his prominent, sharp, unforgettable features. His face is so symmetrical that it’s impossible to look at him for long without a throbbing ache threatening torture-level pain between my…eyes. His full, kissable lips are tilted in the kind of smirk that makes me want to turn back time and reclaim my virginity just so I could offer it as a sacrifice to him.
Because all I’m doing is staring, and probably drooling, the mystery man takes a step toward me, plucks the bags of fudge from midair, and holds them out for me to take.
“You’re Wyka,” I say, instead of, “Hello.” Or, “Thanks.” Or, “Where the hell have you been the past seven years I’ve been a legal adult?”
Never mind the fact that, if he is Wyka, then somehow I’ve been found out. All of my effort and resistance to the call of my birthright has been for nothing.
No. Not nothing. I got vengeance for Claudia, even if I lose everything else in the process.
His smirk widens into a full-on Cheshire Cat grin. Crap, he’s probably here to kill me. His square jaw and perfect eyebrows are already killing me. When his plump lips part, he utters three words that make me more scared of him than if the answer to my question had been yes.
“Not even close.”
A dark, fathomless shadow passes behind his almost black irises, darkening them even more. In a cloudless sky, thunder rumbles the ground, the surrounding buildings, shakes windows.
Fear—the kind that comes from knowing there’s a fate worse than death—snakes down my spine, thickens my blood. That same fear slows time. Shit, no. That’s him.
Mundane humans—here on vacation or on their way to work—all freeze. The air around us thickens with ozone. The sky darkens despite the mid-morning sun.
Another Dark wouldn’t have this kind of power. Most demons, for that matter, save for a select few. And one in particular.
“You!” The accusation comes out, half hostility, half awe.
“I always am me,” the demon says. No, not demon.
Devil.
“How the hell did you find me?” I say, sounding far braver than I feel.
He closes the distance between us, not that there was much. I fight a shiver of revulsion at how badly my body craves the shell of the man before me, even if it’s my father on the inside.
Reaching up slowly, he runs his fingers through my dark red, shoulder-length hair, then skims those same fingers across my jaw, up to my cheek. To a tiny scar no longer visible if you don’t know what you’re looking for. It throbs in response.
“I will always find you, Daughter. Have you ever doubted that?” he asks.
I wouldn’t say I doubted. More like, hoped.
“But I haven’t used any magick,” I challenge, as if I’ll be released early from this conversation due to good behavior.
“I know.” His dark, fathomless eyes almost look sad. “There are other ways to track you.”
I open my mouth to ask him how when lightning touches down, singes the pavement a few feet from us.
The Devil snarls and glances skyward. “I don’t have much time, so I’ll make this quick.”
He digs a cell phone out of his suit pocket and hands it to me.
“This is Dante.” He pats his chest, referring to the body he’s using. “He and his twin are your soul-sworn, born to belong to you. They will be the first two points of your Pentagram. You will bind them, you will mate them, and you will perform the ritual to claim your power. I was promised an Inferi. You will give me what was promised…” He juts his chin toward the phone he just handed me.
He doesn’t need to say, “Or else.” The message is clear. What isn’t clear is what he thinks he can threaten me with that I care enough about.
Another bolt of lightning cracks pavement, this time close enough that the hairs on my arms stand upright. The acrid perfume of burnt brimstone coats my tongue, invades my lungs. I fight the bile rising to the back of my throat, fight the internal lightning storm threatening to burn away every ounce of resolve I’ve built over the past twelve years.
My father closes any distance still left between us. His breath heats my face. His lips brush my ear. His hand grabs mine. The instant we touch, the darkness inside rises, unbidden—and definitely the fuck unwanted—to the surface of my flesh.
“You knew the price, Daughter.” His liquid velvet voice slithers into my ear, infects my brain, poisons my thoughts. “It’s time you pay up.”
The sky rumbles its discontent. Once again, the earth shakes, windows rattle. Like a dried-out, crusty rubber band stretched taught, the Devil’s magick crumbles then snaps. The people around us move at warp speed to catch up with the time they lost, while I’m left standing still.
3
I clutched the grimoire close to my chest and ran into the woods behind my house. I’d tucked an exhausted, still crying Claudia into my bed after a nice hot shower before taking off.
Nothing could wash away what had happened to her, the dirt and wounds from that betrayal ground in soul deep. Still, there was plenty to be said about the cleansing power of water.
I’d wondered if, by the time I got her into bed, my ire would abate. If the raging inferno of vengeance I’d felt toward her attacker would subside into slow, simmering coals of anger and inaction.
No such thing happened. If anything, the uncontrolled conflagration within only consumed me more. It pushed against my mind, threatened to burst forth from my skin. Only one thing could stop it.
After I found a spot in a clearing surrounded by four prominent, strong trees, I plopped down my bag full of witching supplies. The chalice banged against the athame, the blade’s metallic clamor breaking the stillness of the night.
If my mother knew I’d been this disrespectful to her tools, she’d murder me. Actually, if she’d known what I was about to do, she’d murder me anyway.
Setting the grimoire on a grassy patch of ground, I flipped through the pages until I found what I was looking for. A summoning spell. Granted, I wasn’t a Priestess, yet. Technically, I was too young to do magick. But I was my father’s daughter. Already, the call to claim my birthright, to use the Dark magick in my blood, was an intoxicating addiction.
I worked in silence, setting up the circle, drawing in the magickal energies and demonic elements of our world. Nothing stirred in the woods, the chirp of crickets and movement of nocturnal creatures deafeningly absent. It was as if the natural world knew what I planned to do, and they didn’t want to be anywhere near to witness the outcome.
In truth, I was terrified. My mother had warned me that under no circumstances was I ever to summon my father. That in doing so, I would trigger the start of a war between all Darks and the Wyka community, a war that would spill into the mundane world and destroy both.
It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her. I just thought the premise was bullshit. Wykas and Darks had been enemies since there were such things. Had been at war for centuries. The idea that a child, me, could bring about the destruction of both worlds? Ludicrous. Besides, what would be so bad about mundanes learning the truth about the veil, and the world beyond?
In my opinion, those of us who possessed magick had hidden far too long from those who didn’t. History would point out the Crusades. The witch trials. The Inquisition. That’s what happened when magick
and mundane mixed.
No. That’s what happened when magick refused to defend themselves against the mundane. I knew that when I became a full warlock, I’d have zero problems defending myself. Maybe it was my destiny, or fate—or whatever else fictional construct people design to control and explain—to finally bring the two worlds together. Mutual existence, mutual respect.
Dark or not, that was a noble cause.
Standing, hands on hips, I surveyed the circle I’d built. Candles lit the four corners, corresponding with four trees acting as stand-ins for my Pentagram, me being the fifth point. Incense burned in the brazier. Chalice and athame were surrounded by runes I’d carved in the dirt with my fingers. The nearly full moon was overhead.
The setup was perfect. Or as perfect as a pubescent warlock with zero training could get. It would have to be good enough. Dad would get the message.
Wetting my lips, I dropped to my knees beside the grimoire and grabbed the athame. The double-edged blade gleamed in the moonlight, dared me to make the first cut. Draw first blood.
No magick was ever done without sacrifice. With Dark magick, the price was always blood.
I held the blade to the delicate flesh on my wrist. My heart pounded against my chest. The swish of it pulsed through my veins at a rapid pace. Don’t do this, a small voice deep within begged. It was my mother’s voice. The voice of my own innocence.
I wondered if Claudia whispered the same thing to her attacker when he took her virginity. Her dignity. Her power.
With one swipe of the blade, I cut away both my mother’s warning and my innocence. If Claudia had to live without hers, the least I could do was join her.
Dark clouds gathered, blotting out the stars and moon, turning night into something far more sinister. I ignored it and began chanting. The trees rustled with an invisible wind. The air thickened and grew turbulent. It choked me as I struggled to breathe it in.
I never stopped chanting.
Words in Wykonic, the language of magick, rolled off my tongue. My lips and mouth easily formed the sounds. I was born to speak this language, born to command magick.
Shadows and Sorcery: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 90
