The fight had been evenly matched when he ran after the demon. He returned to a slaughter. He understood why the tide had turned against them when he saw a witch strike down the last of his wolves while he was still too far away to assist.
Betrayed. The witches had changed their allegiance and now fought for the demons, turning on those who had trusted them enough to turn their backs.
The strike had clearly been well planned and executed. The demon he’d pursued had lured him away until it was too late. Now his pack lay butchered.
Kenric felt his muscles gather, tensing to spring. His eyes fixed on the coven’s leader. Kill her and see how well her sister witches fared.
His strength carried him through the air. His fury found its target, and he brought the woman down. He saw then the reason for her perfidy, the price of the coven’s loyalty. The witch clutched a spell parchment scribed with demon markings. Her desperate grasp became eternal as her life’s blood soaked into the thirsty ground.
An unmistakable scent caught his attention. The piece of writing wasn’t just inscribed by a demon; it held a demon embodied. Kenric bit at the papyrus, determined to destroy it along with her, but it eluded him, vanishing before his jaws could close around it. The witch’s now empty hand still formed a claw, as if reaching after what she had traded their world for even in death.
Death took him next.
He opened his eyes to see a woman in full battle dress, heavily armed, wings extended behind her. A star shone on her forehead. He knew who he faced. He’d seen her likeness depicted often enough.
“Inanna,” he said. “What dream is this?”
“No dream.” The goddess regarded him with eyes that burned with power. “You fought well.”
“Not well enough.”
“I am the judge of that.”
Kenric supposed she was. Men forgot Inanna’s other aspects when they celebrated her as the goddess of sexual drives. She was also a warrior goddess.
“Would you continue?”
The question made Kenric bare his teeth. “I would continue from death and beyond. I would continue for all of eternity.”
“Fierce warrior.” Inanna gave him an approving smile. “You choose the same fate as your fellow captains of battle.”
“They all fell?” Kenric asked the question automatically, realizing as he spoke that of course they had. The slaughter had been too complete.
“They did. And like you, they choose to fight on. You will wear my star and defend the world’s five gates against the shadow realms. Werewolf, demon, dragon, vampire, and sidhe, you are now my chosen immortal warriors, my Shadow Guardians.”
As she named him, Kenric felt fingers of fire drawing on his chest. He looked down to see her sign burned into the skin over his heart, an eight-pointed star.
CHAPTER ONE
SYBIL AMES WAS ON HER WAY HOME FROM WORK WHEN SHE SAW THE estate sale sign. The radio began to blast out Ace of Base’s “I Saw the Sign” simultaneously, and it struck her as synchronicity. Estate sales had all sorts of things mixed together, trash and treasure. Lured by the possibility of a real find, she put on her blinker and pulled into the drive.
The house wasn’t one of the new McMansions that seemed to be all subdivisions produced anymore. It was rickety and gloomy and more than a little surly, slanting on a hill with an aggressive tilt. If any neighborhood covenants and restrictions applied, the homeowners association was either too apathetic or too intimidated to enforce them.
A prime location for a ghost. Sybil perked up at the possibility. She’d never encountered a real ghost. Or anything very interesting, for that matter. Her apprentice witch status pretty much made her the coven’s errand girl, and everything exciting remained shrouded in secrecy. It was like being a kid who constantly heard a chorus of “You’ll understand when you’re older” from the adults, but a whole lot more frustrating since she was an adult herself.
The scattered items out in the driveway were either thoroughly picked over already, or the estate hadn’t had much to offer to begin with.
Picked over, Sybil decided, eyeing a piece of dark walnut furniture that had started off quality before it wound up on the wrong side of entropy. Antique dealers tended to hit sales early and buy up anything valuable to resell.
Still, that one piece gave her hope that something else had been discarded or passed up. Her hotel bland apartment really needed a touch of gothic. A stone gargoyle was just the sort of thing she might trip over here.
The passed-up, sagging armoire demanded closer inspection, so Sybil tried the doors and drawers, half-expecting a bat to fly out in the process. Instead, she found one drawer stuck tight. She pulled harder, and it came loose in a rush that almost sent her backwards. Her desperate flailing for balance wasn’t graceful, but it saved her from falling on her ass. Sybil peered into the armoire to see what caused the drawer to stick and spotted the book.
The leather binding was cracked and dirty. She pried it out carefully and opened it up. It looked like a personal diary of some sort. It wasn’t. The faded words crowded the pages in a cramped, back-slanting, and almost illegible style, but the content was unmistakable.
She’d found a grimoire.
Interesting. Sybil turned the brittle pages with care, slowly deciphering handwriting for which the nuns at her Catholic school would’ve threatened the author with hell. Not that witches believed in hell, so the handwriting atrocities would’ve continued with the sinner unrepentant. Sybil still found a grim satisfaction in imagining the hand responsible for her straining eyes clutching the pen with bloody knuckles.
She should put it back. She held onto it anyway, reluctant to put it down.
It looked like it contained pretty advanced magic. If she could do a spell or two out of this book successfully, on her own, without a senior witch overseeing every step of the ritual and the coven approving her experiment in advance, maybe she’d finally prove she was ready for more than sweeping up spilled salt and washing away used pentagrams.
Maybe she could finally get a familiar of her own. Maybe she could finally start learning something useful. Some real magic.
She opened the book again, deliberating, and let out a startled curse when she got a paper cut on her index finger. A drop of blood fell on the book, making the decision for her. She’d damaged it, although she could argue that the book had damaged her first. Either way, she’d have to buy it now.
She tucked it under her arm and carried it with her while she poked through the remains of the estate sale. It was a disappointment, overall. No leering stone gargoyles. No buried treasure. Just trash, except for the little handwritten leather book.
Sybil made her way to the disinterested woman in charge. “How much for this?”
The woman frowned, pulled out a pair of reading glasses, and consulted a list. “Books are two dollars,” she said.
Sybil paid and carted her booty home. Home was a ground-floor apartment in Oakton, Virginia, modern and comfortable and lacking in essential character. Although considering the character the estate sale house demonstrated, maybe there was something to be said for bland. At least her apartment wouldn’t attract a ghost. Then again, a poltergeist would liven the place up.
“I need a familiar,” Sybil told the book. “This place needs more than a makeover. It needs life.”
She put the grimoire down on her altar. It seemed like the right place for it. She felt a little shock jump from the altar’s surface to her hand and let out a hiss of surprise at the static discharge.
It’s just a book of shadows written in really bad cursive, Sybil told herself. The altar isn’t rejecting it.
Except she had cut her finger on it, and if the drop of blood had activated some long-dormant magic . . . a chill went through her, and she took a step back. Her retreat came too late. The book opened, pages rifling as if turned by unseen fingers. Words glowed as if written in fire.
Sybil wanted nothing more than to shut the book. Instead, she found
herself running her cut finger along the burning words, speaking the written words out loud. She couldn’t even identify the type of spell she was compelled to recite, but the power of it was unmistakable, and it held her trapped. With each syllable, the sensation of power built. Unfortunately, it wasn’t power that was hers to command. Just the opposite.
She’d wanted real magic. She realized, too late, that she should have been more specific. This was very real, and she wasn’t its master. She was at its mercy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charlene Teglia made her first novel sale in 2004. Since then her books have garnered several honors, including Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best Erotic Novel, two CAPA nominations for Best Erotic Anthology, and Romantic Times Top Pick. When she’s not writing, she can be found hiking around the Olympic Peninsula with her family or opening and closing doors for cats.
To learn more, visit her on the Web at www.charleneteglia.com.
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