HotHardHexing

by Mari Freeman

  “Just checking.” Ray nodded. Cindy ducked down under the stairway and disappeared around the back side of the boat.

  Sonja felt another strong surge in her mind. It came with little warning and she was unable to block Q completely. “He’s coming for us.”

  Ray glanced around. “Well, we’re going to pick the place then.” He left the tight cover of the stairs and they cautiously moved around to the back of the boat.

  A fireball whizzed past them. Sonja saw Marvin fighting off three Vamps. Ray backed Sonja behind him and held his wand at the ready.

  Two men appeared at the rail of the third deck. She knew instantly which was Q. He was old and tall, his skin pale—and power poured off him in menacing waves. Kara was slumped against the other man, obviously the muscles of the operation.

  Her cousin’s face was bruised and swollen.

  “Kara!” Sonja shouted.

  “Your cousin is near unconsciousness, Sonja Ambercroft.” Q crossed his arms, relaxed and confident. “You’ve tried my patience over and over again, but have brought me my prize in the end. I may release her yet.”

  “Bring her down, Q,” Ray ordered.

  Sonja heard a splash and saw Cindy struggling to grab the paddle wheel as the swift current of the Mississippi River tried to drag the drag queen toward the gulf.

  Sonja took two steps in Cindy’s direction before Ray caught her arm.

  “Stay behind me,” he growled. Sonja followed his instructions but watched as Cindy lost his grip and slipped under.

  “Ray!” she pleaded.

  “Cindy can swim.”

  But Sonja wasn’t so sure Cindy could fight the current.

  Ray wasn’t taking his eyes off Q for an instant. There was no clue as to the species holding on to Kara. Sonja sensed nothing from him. He must have learned some mental tricks from Q because he was a blank page.

  Marvin and a skinny Vamp fought their way closer. The Vamp had a good fifty pounds on the Fairy and had injured Marvin’s shoulder, but Marvin connected with a good right hook to the ribs and followed it up with a blazing fireball to the crotch. The Vamp tumbled backward, flipping over the rail and into the water. He screeched and hollered as he was pulled downstream and under by the current.

  Sonja looked up at Q. His round, pale face hardened. A physical manifestation of all the hate and anger and frustration building up in his mind.

  Without warning, he held out a hand and blasted her with it.

  The waves of emotion shot through her, knocking her to the ground and sucking all the air from her lungs.

  The next few things all happened in seconds that felt like years. Sonja had to slow the events down in her head to make them comprehensible.

  Q flew—literally flew, with yellow teeth bared—from the third deck, his robes trailing behind him. “Kill her!” he yelled on his way down.

  The goon supporting Kara didn’t hesitate to follow Q’s orders. He picked her up and effortlessly threw her limp body over the rail. Kara sailed head first into the murky Mississippi river.

  Sonja screamed over both the pain of all those emotions swirling in her chest and the rage at seeing Kara sink under the swift current.

  Q landed in a squatting position in front of Ray but before he could stand, Ray blasted him with a thruster spell, knocking him off balance and causing his body to roll swiftly to the side. He crashed into the railing in front of the paddle wheel.

  The goon up top blasted Ray with a fireball that sent him careening back and tripping over Sonja, still on her knees on the deck.

  Ray didn’t lose his bearings completely. In a whirl, he recovered and spun to volley with a fireball of his own. It blasted the goon in the chest, thrusting him backward. Ray immediately followed it with a spell Sonja didn’t recognize, but it was fast and it knocked the goon to the ground. Writhing and moaning, he didn’t get up.

  Q hit Ray from the side, tackling him, knocking his wand from his hand and taking them both to the ground. He pressed a palm to Ray’s head.

  Ray started screaming, his legs kicking. Sonja couldn’t sense what images or emotions Q was forcing into Ray’s mind, but she knew it was bad.

  She searched the deck for a weapon. Anything to hit Q with. There was nothing. Sonja shook as she got to her feet. She’d shove him off if she had to—

  Before she was upright, a shot rang out.

  Q’s head snapped up. Blood ran down his neck. Sonja snapped her head around…

  Cindy was inside the paddle wheel, hanging over one of the big blades, gun in his big, beautiful hand.

  Sonja looked back at Q and, for a moment, met his gaze. She felt the icy fingers of death pulling him away. She shivered violently—then thought of Kara.

  Without thought or worry, Sonja plunged over the rail in the area where Kara had gone under.

  The current was fast, the water cold and murky. She couldn’t see a thing. And with the added weight of the backpack, she felt heavy and awkward in the water. She needed help.

  With Mi-ma’s words in her head and a newfound confidence in her Dragon, she called the change. She needed all her Water Dragon abilities to find Kara.

  The change came quicker than it had in Cindy’s bed. Her Dragon roared to life. Her side hurt like hell and she was conscious of tearing, but it eased and healed as fast as it ripped. Her Dragon’s magic.

  Sonja took just a second to experience how the world felt under the waves. She couldn’t breathe, but she could see and she could swim much faster. The current was no longer her foe. She felt the undulations of the flow and used them. She twisted to allow her body to follow the current with less resistance.

  The water looked slimy green through her new vision, but she could make out the bottom and obstacles and shapes. Beneath the surface, the Mississippi was littered with downed trees and other items, and Sonja caught sight of Kara quicker than she’d anticipated. She was hung up in some sort of debris on the bottom, her upper body swaying back and forth with the current. She looked lifeless.

  Running out of breath before she could get closer, Sonja instead swam to the top, roaring for air and help at the same time. She was farther from the boat than she’d thought. Help wouldn’t be getting to her anytime soon. The current was strong and quickly pulled her past Kara, despite Sonja’s enhanced Dragon strength. She fought to get to the shore and pull herself up the slick, muddy bank.

  She ran back upstream and jumped in again, finding her cousin once more, this time noting the current had partially tucked Kara under a log. Slipping out of the backpack and slipping it over a branch, Sonja struggled with the slick wood holding Kara under. She yanked fiercely but it wasn’t budging. How long had it been? She couldn’t determine. She screamed under the water, the sound muffled and pathetic.

  A second pair of hands joined hers, tugging on the log holding Kara fast. Sonja looked up to see Marvin, his big eyes open and his hair floating wildly around his face. He nodded. They tugged together as hard as they could. Nothing doing. They couldn’t move it.

  He waved her away and Sonja moved. Marvin reared back and sent a thrusting spell at the log.

  Bright green light blasted the log into pieces. A strange watery percussion pushed Sonja back hard. Burning pain pierced her thigh and her side—a shard of wood had penetrated her leg and if felt as if another had shattered at least a couple of ribs.

  She held her side and tried to find her equilibrium—the backpack floated past the drifting debris and Kara, just out of Sonja’s reach.

  Sonja got one last glance at the pack containing the Chiwa as it was about to disappear into the murky water. If she went after it, Kara died.

  Her leg burned. She felt as if she’d been kicked in the ribs…

  She turned, pulled Kara free and swam painfully toward the surface, then the shore. The bank was steep and muddy, but after two failed attempts to pull her all them both to dry land, she managed to get Kara safely on a patch of long grass.

  Kara wasn’t breathing.


  Sonja did her best to administer chest compressions, trying to recall her CPR training. She used what little strength she had left to press down on Kara’s soggy chest, praying to the Goddess she wasn’t doing more damage than good. With every push, Sonja’s side screamed in agony. The wound in her leg bled freely.

  Thankfully, with a few more compressions, Kara was spitting and coughing.

  Sonja collapsed and lay beside her cousin. Her leg was still bleeding badly, high on her thigh. The gash caused by the flying log shrapnel was deep and several inches long.

  “Great.” All she needed was another scar. She tried to staunch the blood with her hand.

  Her Dragon had receded. At least there was no pain in her other scars, but her body was tired and weak and her leg throbbed like mad with each beat of her heart. She was losing a lot of blood. With her free hand, Sonja leaned over and touched her cousin’s face, so happy to hear her coughing. She pushed Kara’s hair to the side to inspect her injuries. There were a few bruises, but nothing felt broken. “You okay?”

  Kara nodded. “He’s going to kill you,” she gasped out. “No matter what.”

  “No. He’s not.” Sonja shushed her. “He’s dead. You rest. Help’s coming.”

  Then she remembered Marvin. She sat up and scanned the water. He wasn’t on the shoreline and Sonja didn’t see his head bobbing up and down in the swiftly moving water. Wounded and without her Dragon, she wouldn’t be able to find him under the murky Mississippi.

  She reached out for him with her mind. She felt his life force, weak and struggling.

  Cindy and Ray were running toward them. “Ray!” She tried to get up despite the pain in her leg. “Marvin. He blasted a log to free Kara but didn’t come up!” She swayed as she tried to stand. Ray caught her.

  Scanning the water’s surface, she concentrated on Marvin, on finding his life force once more…

  Magical blowback had caught his leg under another branch. He was out of air, out of time, no longer fighting his fate.

  And it was…okay?

  Sonja saw everything he was thinking as he let his life slip away.

  Symbols popped into her head. Two of them. One was the Brotherhood symbol, the other was three intersecting rings with something she couldn’t quite make out in the center. They were important to him.

  And then, for the second time that day, Sonja felt death slip in and take what was rightfully his.

  Everything felt cold and empty. Blurry, as if her life were being sucked away with Marvin’s.

  Sonja felt her body being shaken. She was leaning into Ray, she knew, gripping his shoulders so hard it hurt her fingers. She opened her eyes and tried to concentrate on his face.

  The world was going dark…

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sonja hung up the phone. It was the second conversation she’d had with her sister tonight. “Nell yelled, cursed…I could even hear her stomping her feet.” Sonja smiled at Ray. “She’s still a bit mad at me.”

  Ray had been by her side for the last twelve hours as Barri stitched and made healing poultices for her thigh. Sonja reached for her glass of Barri’s special herbal tea. It made her feel a bit loopy, but much better. Ray grabbed it first and tried to hold it to her lips. His attentiveness, while sweet, was getting to be a bit much.

  “I can get it, Ray.” She took the glass from him. “I have a cut leg. My hands are quite capable.”

  “Sorry.” He blushed as Cindy, now back in the feminine garb that Sonja thought fit him much better, slid into an empty chair.

  “What about the Council?” The she-man worried his big hands. “Ray and I are both in deep shit now, aren’t we?”

  She had discussed that with her sister. Ray had been near banished, forbidden to do magic off his property, and boy, had he broken that edict. She put her hand on his shoulder. He looked concerned, but more for her than over whatever the Council may hand down.

  “Nell talked to the Prime.” Sonja winked at Cindy. “She sleeps with him, after all. He talked to someone on the Council. And…you two did save both me and Kara.” Kara was upstairs in another room. Barri wanted her to have some quiet time. Q had been bombarding her brain for days. She needed nothing but inner thoughts and lots of Barri’s special tea.

  Ray shrugged. “I made my decision back on that mountain pass, before coming to New Orleans. I did what I thought was right. If the Council is beyond seeing that these days, I may want to reside in another realm.”

  “You don’t mean that.” She leaned up and kissed him on the forehead. “Trent said you’ll be okay. Given the circumstances…” She looked at the ceiling, trying to look as innocent as possible. “Seeing as how you were trying to retrieve the box for the Council.”

  “They bought that?” He laughed. “Given we lost the box to the Mississippi, that Prime must have a way with words.”

  Sonja shrugged. “I always thought he was an arrogant clout. But he’s been around us since he was a young Alpha Were. Soon he’ll be family. So he painted the picture in a very positive way for us.”

  He pulled her close. “I have to say, I’m not at all unhappy the box is out of our lives.”

  Our lives. He’d said our lives. “I’m ready to go home.” She looked over Ray’s big shoulder to Cindy. “No offense, but I like my little mountain town much better than this city full of magical creatures.”

  “None taken.” Cindy got up and looked out the window of Barri’s parlor. They could see the lush courtyard with its fountain and pretty table umbrellas. “I’ve considered leaving here before too. But there’s a magic here that lives no place else.”

  He turned and smiled at Sonja. “And somehow I don’t think I’d fit in a small country town.”

  Cindy’s hairy, bowed legs sprung from a bright yellow, very short skirt. His halter-top was tangerine and showed off a stunning beer belly.

  Sonja suppressed a laugh that Ray was unable to control. “Nope. Cindy, you’re where you belong.” He stood up and slapped Cindy on the shoulder. “Thank the Goddess you were here too.”

  Cindy gave him a nod. “If you two don’t mind then, I’m going back to my boring life as a bouncer at a supernatural sex club.” He gave a jaunty salute. “Best of luck to ya.”

  “Thanks again,” Sonja said as he patted her cheek and then walked away on three-inch, platform espadrilles.

  Ray returned to his spot on the makeshift bed Barri had fashioned out of the divan in the main room. Sonja’s leg was propped up on several pillows and she had the best view of the courtyard. No better hospital in the country, if you asked her.

  Ray took her hand.

  And the nurse here was really hot. The image of him naked and making her scream came rushing to her like a vision. She smiled at her thoughts.

  His eyes heated as if he knew what she was thinking.

  “None of that for a day or two, lovebirds.” Barri swept into the room with the ease of a dancer.

  “How do you do that?” Sonja asked, amazed that the blind woman had more grace than most.

  “Do you not see with your mind, Halfling?” She felt over the items on the table and located a vial and a candle. She rubbed some of the contents of the vial over her palm and then over the candle before placing it back in its holder. “Mr. Burgess, if you would be so kind.”

  Ray conjured a small fireball and lit the candle.

  “When can we go home?” Ray asked. Sonja had wondered the same thing, but didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want to know what might happen next. What if, back in North Carolina, Ray wanted to go back to his hermit-like existence? She couldn’t go back to hers. She knew it.

  Ray must have seen the look on her face. “Yes. I said we.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “Someone has to keep an eye on you.”

  Barri put her hand over the wound. “It’s still warm. The waters of the river are dirty. I’d guess a few more days, maybe a week. The gash was deep and it had wounded her Dragon as well as her flesh. I would like to see all the layers of her healin
g before too much activity. When we feel the Dragon again, we’ll know more.” She winked a cloudy eye at Ray then turned a knowing expression to Sonja. “I’ll leave you two to chat.”

  “Something’s bothering you,” Ray said when they were alone again.

  “I…well, I know I dragged you out of your quiet life and into this mess. I did some stupid things, made some really bad decisions.”

  He shook his head. “You were under Q’s influence.”

  She was, but she’d also made a few mistakes of her own. “I could have gotten you killed. I mean…Marvin. He died because of me.”

  “No, honey. Don’t you worry about Marvin. He took a risk using magic underwater like that. Water reflects energy just like light. It’s hard to control. He made that choice to save you and Kara. Marvin died because he was on a mission. One he believed in and chose to take on. The Brotherhood is a very serious commitment. They work outside the Council law, believing the Council has never had the true interest of the supernatural as top priority. Some say they believe the Council is on the verge of some kind of revolution to let the dark purveyors take over.” He shook his head. “Who knows the real truth? In the meantime, they find all kinds of dangerous stuff and hide it away.” Ray pushed her hair out of her eyes and behind her ear. “Why do you suppose your father had the Chiwa, anyway?”

  She laughed. “He was a professor, a collector of knowledge. He has all kinds of historical and intriguing stuff. Much of it is still in Nell’s basement. That’s where she found the Chiwa. I was always fascinated with the trinkets he brought home from his travels. Before Nell opened the puzzle box for the first time, it was just a boring wooden box. He probably found it on some excursion and had no clue what was in it.”

  “Maybe we should see what else he’s got in that basement before you get us into more trouble.” He kissed her hand. Her heart soared at the emotion she could feel from him. She didn’t have to question it or question them. He was plainly letting her see into his heart. “When we go home.”