Dark Bargain (Kayla McQueen Book 2)

by brett hicks

  “Life’s too short Jon, please, I will not blame you.”

  Jon must not have had much self-restraint left either, because he slammed his lips back on mine passionately and he guided my body down to the mattress. I was in one of Sally’s oversized tee shirts and a pair of black panties, Jon had the former off just about as fast as my back hit the bed. I felt his lips trail down my neck, to my breasts and I felt him gently take my left breast into his mouth and I felt liquid heat forming between my legs.

  I opened my legs wider and one of his hands snaked down, tugging my panties down. I helped the process by pulling my legs up and then kicking them off completely. I pulled his shirt up and over his head and he threw it into the corner. He leaned down, kissing my lips and trying to unbutton his jeans.

  I felt his hot, hard body mount me, flesh to flesh and I felt myself opening my leg wider, giving him all the permission he needed. Jon looked into my eyes with awe and adoration, something I had seen him give in smaller doses in unguarded moments. He kissed the tip of my nose and then he my lips again.

  I felt him slowly enter my small body, he had to work to fit himself inside me. I groaned, partially from the pain, partially from pleasure. He slowly quickened his thrusts and deepened them. I felt the pressure building inside my core and I rocked my hips in time with his rhythm.

  I felt something burst inside me and I screamed, not caring who might hear. I bit into his shoulder lightly, drawing a mouth full of blood, and I licked the tiny fang marks, enjoying the taste of his life essence, as he emptied himself inside me.

  Jon lay beside me and I rolled over, he pulled me onto his chest. I laid my head across his thick muscle clad chest. My fingertips playing with the many curves and grooves of his well sculpted chest. I swore to myself that I would not get angry about this choice later, I would enjoy the complete satisfaction and the release of all the tension built up over a lifetime of remaining isolated.

  “Jon, I love you too.”

  I thought he was asleep, but I felt him lean down and kiss my forehead gently.

  ****

  No one disturbed us for the rest of the day, a house full of supernatural beings did not need to be told to avoid the room with sexual activity in session. I let Jon make love to me twice more, and I lay spent, and nearly brain dead after our last time. Jon liked cuddling and randomly kissing me. He seemed like he just had to shower affection, like he knew I might never let it happen again.

  I managed to free myself long enough to take a very hot, very long bath. I tried not to think about my mom, but now that I was alone again, it was impossible not to. She had sacrificed for me my whole life. She had been my everything, she was the singularly greatest woman to ever exist. It hurt, my whole body hurt, my brain and my stomach ached. Everything that was ‘me’ ached. I could not function, I was like a spectral existence, not Kayla.

  Jon leaned over the tub and kissed my forehead. I looked up into his eyes and I saw myself reflected in his eyes. I could not understand what it was he saw, but he looked at me like I was beautiful—like I was just a normal girl.

  “I just woke, thought I would check on you chérie. How are you?”

  I shrugged and said, “Numb mostly.”

  He nodded and said, “It will take much time, but you need to remember, your mom believed in you, even until her last breath. Chérie, in this ghost city, I dare say she is still there, still watching her beautiful daughter.”

  I attempted to sound casual and said, “I sure hope she wasn’t in here today, that might scare us both for life.”

  Jon snorted and conceded my point.

  “There’s my sassy girl, I was afraid I lost you for a while there.”

  I gave him a cocky look and said, “Jon, they only thing I lost was my virginity.”

  He rolled his eyes, clearly still amused with my banter. My instincts to shut him back out were there, but I was just not willing to go through with it. I would save that decision for another day.

  “You better get some rest chérie, I have some inkling as to what they plan for you tomorrow, you will need all the strength you can get.”

  I pointed my right index finger at him in accusation and said, “I am totally blaming you.”

  Seventeen:

  I woke up, the sheets were warm, Jon had not been gone long. I felt reality hit me like a ton of bricks, I had sex, lots of it. I quickly found a grey tank top and a pair of black yoga pants. I tied my hair up into a high pony. I looked around, but I could not find my weapons anywhere. I decided to risk walking out, the last person in the world, I wanted to run into in this unholy morning, was sitting sipping coffee.

  Bright green eyes twinkling with deep amusement and a huge wolfish grin on her face, Sally sipped her coffee and made exaggerated moaning sounds into her beverage. We both loved coffee, but I knew damn well that she was already beginning her teasing. Sally had waited over eighteen years for this very day. The huge Lycan goof was going to milk it for every damn once of laughter she could get.

  “Do you need some coffee to go with all that cream Kay?”

  I shot her a death glare, Sally just snickered into her mug and took another sip.

  Joan walked in, her aura was calm, peaceful like the slow tides in the evening.

  “Sweetheart, come with me, there is something you must see for yourself.”

  I nodded and followed her out the front door. The morning sky was breaking with the first days of dawn through the thick moist trees. The thick, swampy scents of the stagnant, murky waters filled my nose. I quickly tuned out my sense of smell.

  Joan’s long yellow hair flowed behind her like a bridal veil. She took great strides for a short woman. She paced and I quickened to keep pace with her now.

  She pointed to the tree beyond the sight of the large cabin we were bunking in. I looked, following her finger and I saw another Joan looking back at me, blinking, same curved scar in the corner of her lip. Same deep scar running the length of her cheek.

  I walked over to the other Joan and I poked her, but then it burst into the water. I whipped my head around in surprise, looking my grandmother in her eyes with shock.

  “What the hell was that?”

  She smirked and said, “Ancient McQueen secret, the human body is made up eighty percent of water Kayla. I was never as good at it as your mother, she had more raw magic, more precision and much more determination to perfect strange, obscure spells.”

  “Then…”

  She smirked and nodded.

  “When you are strong, pretend you are weak, when you are weak, pretend to be strong…”

  I finished by saying, “And when you’re alive, pretend you are dead?”

  She widened her smile, her eyes lit with the rising rays of light overhead and nodded again.

  “Jenny and I arranged for such an event to happen. It was not just chance that I taught you the proverbial skeleton key to shattering all my protective magic Kayla. Jenny reached out to me, she did not believe that the sorcerer would reveal themselves full, unless we let them believe they had cornered us—that she was winning.”

  “Mom is…”

  “Yes, honey, yes, I swear it to you. I have blood runes carved into my skin. My own daughter could never die without my knowing it.”

  I pointed at her accusingly and said, “But I saw you crying!”

  Joan gave me a very tolerant, but chiding look and said, “I am a water witch, never underestimate the deceptions a water witch can perform with her element.”

  “Then, where is mom?”

  Joan smiled even wider and her scar tugged on her cheek.

  “She is deep into enemy territory, she is shadowing the prissy little girl. We needed to know who the sorcerer was, but more than that, we need to know where the drained power is being stored and what it is being used for.”

  I blinked rapidly, taking in the information Joan had just slammed me with.

  “Jenny and I really had not talked in years, but do not be fooled into belie
ving that meant that we have not slipped each other information from time to time. We are McQueens Kayla dear. We have firmly kept what tiny cooperation we shared, fully from any prying eyes. We utilized this to our advantage. No one expected us to communicate a strategy, hell, Jaden probably thought I was a lot more blind to her power grabs.”

  I stilled and said, “Who else knew?”

  She shook her head and said, “No one.”

  “Well, not exactly, I was pretty sure it was a ruse, since I know Jenny McQueen too well to fall for such a parlor trick.”

  I turned and saw Bella sticking to the thick shadows. She could probably stay out for about twenty more minutes without any trouble. Vampires did not just go to dust at the touch of the sun after all, they needed a little more exposure than a few moments, to be deadly.

  “Bella, I was sure you would, but I can only speak as to what I knew at the time.”

  “Little one, you must learn, Jenny left you with Joan for a reason.”

  I looked back to my grandma and she sighed and rolled her eyes.

  “Your mom was right, you do not know how to fight a sorcerer, but I do. My mother, your great-grandmother, taught me the arts. This is a lost art of assassination Kayla, I refused to teach it to your mother and if word reached the wrong ears that I taught it to my dyamphyr granddaughter, then your head would have a heavy price on it fast.”

  I felt hope burn in me, brightly, my grandmother was telling me that there was a way to combat that weird magic and that my mom was alive!

  She must have read my change in mood, because she ominously said, “Once this is done, it shall never be undone. You will forever be changed, touched of shadow.”

  I saw the darkening in her blue eyes and it finally registered with me.

  “This darkening, is that what you meant when you said that some magic has a heavy price?”

  Joan nodded and closed her eyes, seemingly lost in another time.

  “You must surrender your lesser element and possibly as a dyamphyr, your glamor magic too. You will never be able to use either again, not once this has fully been achieved.”

  “Is there another way? Why don’t you just do this yourself?”

  Joan gave her a look and Bella sighed.

  “Child, you should know by now, Joan is a shadow of her former glory. She could do just enough to raise the child sorcerer’s guard, nothing more.”

  “Indeed, this form of magic is something that little bitch knew I could not combat in earnest, that is probably why she chose to surrender her elements to it.”

  “That’s why her water magic was so weak the first time she challenged me. She wanted me to think she was no threat.”

  “Not dissimilar to the very type of the deceptions we are using on her now.”

  I closed my eyes, I felt the vein of fire magic in my blood, running through my body and I felt the chilly vampiric magics flowing from the place that resided adjacent to my ice magic.

  I looked to Bella and said, “Will this destroy my balance?”

  Bella shook her head and said, “You will always need blood Kayla, but this should suppress some of your baser urges, also making such blood fury fevers next to impossible.”

  I thought about it, and I finally nodded.

  “Teach me grams, I am willing to pay the price.”

  “Be warned before we start child, that part of you that once housed your vampiric darkness, will now house a void. The vampire is naught of the darkness of necromancy, but the void is darkness incarnate. This price was never paid lightly child, it was something only a few witches were willing to do, for the sake of the whole.”

  “That sounds a little less cool, but I don’t really have a choice, do I? Besides, I am willing to pay, I don’t want to see someone I love actually die next time.”

  Bella clapped her hands together and nodded to Joan.

  “She certainly reminds me of a certain young void-walker I once knew.”

  Joan grunted, something a lot less lady like than anything I had ever seen her do since I met her. Bella just shrugged, she really was like a shorter, more compact, vampire version of Sally.

  No wonder they were as thick as thieves!

  “Well, I will be getting in now, I suspect the silly little wolf has cooked, or was it your lover Kayla? Either way, we could use some sustenance.”

  Bella walked into the house with even strides, yet she seemed to glide across the distance in a very inhuman burst of motion.

  Joan leaned in to me and muttered, “She is showing off for you, she is always like this if given half a chance and an audience.”

  I snorted and said, “She reminds me of a certain silly wolf-girl I know.”

  Joan nodded and said, “She is trustworthy, as is said silly little wolf girl.”

  I locked my eyes on hers, taking in her meaning. Joan nodded once more, affirming that I could trust Bella. Joan generally hated all things vampire, so this was high praise coming from her.

  We turned and headed for the door and Joan put an arm around me and muttered, “Your mother might just kill us both when she learns that you lost your virginity under my watch.”

  I nearly tripped on a fallen branch in my shock. Joan tilted her head up and laughed, a roaring laugh, something she had not really done since I met her. I could see the scar raised up to the side of her cheek more and her smile made her look closer to my age. She looked like a young girl again, only her deep ocean eyes told of her years of deadly experience.

  Eighteen:

  Joan had told me to enjoy the day and to come to her once the sun went down. She sounded a lot more ominous than usual. That could not bode well for me.

  I spent the afternoon with Jon, I was naked and once again physically and mentally exhausted. I lay on top his chest and I groaned, looking at the time.

  “I need to get going soon. I have some creepy ass witchy shit to do.”

  “Chérie, are you sure you want to do this?”

  I shrugged and said, “I don’t have much of a choice, do I? Joan says it is the only way to counter what Jaden has become.”

  Jon looked at me heated, with an optimism, I could not seem to feel myself.

  “I just have a bad feeling about this Kayla, I know that your grandma would not do anything to hurt you. However, she is from the dark ages. Her definition of ‘harm’ is very different from ours. She said this will change you, what if you are never yourself again?”

  I closed my eyes and I nuzzled his chest, digging into my comfy spot deeper. I sighed and said, “I am going to do it Jon, even if it does fuck me up. I am not worth the millions that will be affected if I leave Jaden to her power-hungry ways.”

  “What cost are you willing to pay? How much is this grudge worth to you Kayla McQueen?”

  Jon sounded cold, angry, I could feel his fear for me. I knew he loved me and I kissed his chest and felt a single hot tear fall onto his chest. I looked up, wiped my eyes and said, “Promise me, if I come back different, you will let me go.”

  Jon’s eyes widened and he shook his head and said, “Kayla, I finally have you, I am not letting you go, never!”

  I hissed and let him see my full-length fangs and my silver eyes.

  “Jon, I am not a mortal like you! I will have to grieve you two-thousand-years from now!”

  Jon sighed and caressed my cheek and then leaned up and kissed my lips, glancing my sharp fang with his lip. I felt a drop of his blood run onto my bottom lip and I instinctively licked it.

  “You have a part of my life inside you chérie, always—along with my heart.”

  I rolled free of him and stood, then I slammed the bathroom door and took a fast shower.

  ****

  Jon followed me to the mouth of a dank, dark cave. Deep in the swamplands, far from the prying eyes of the outside world. Joan and Bella waited for me to enter.

  “Chérie, I do not like this.”

  I sighed and I leaned up, standing on my tip toes. Jon caught the back of my head gent
ly and captured my lips in a passionate kiss. I closed my eyes and I let my weight fall back to the ground and my lips quickly out of range. I breathed in his masculine, spicy scent and savored it, as if for the last time.

  “Come child, we must go, the doorway between realms is not open for long.”

  I nodded and I spared him one last glance, then turned and followed the older woman into the maw of a dark, spiraling pool. It was like something from a sci-fi movie, I stepped through and the cold hit me and my breath hitched.

  When I opened my eyes again, I was staring at a massive temple, deep underground. No light shone, no warmth comforted my body. I felt void, stripped of all my senses. Something slinked to us and I felt strange voids, not presences, but a deep lack of presence. My eyes glowed silver and I could make out shadowy figures around me, as I turned and looked in each direction.

  “Grandma, what the hell did you just lead me into?”

  Joan held her hand up and said, “Silence child!”

  A whisper, or a roar of the wind, I could not be sure at first.

  ‘Ah, my student, you have returned to me. Who have you brought before me, child?’

  Did that voice thing just call Joan “child?”

  ‘All are children before me, little dyamphyr.’