Ascension

by Felicity Heaton

  When he had unlocked the black sedan, she opened the passenger side door and dropped into the seat. She buckled her seatbelt on autopilot, staring at the coven building.

  She hoped she had made the right decision in breaking company with them. When the peak of her ascension hit, she would be vulnerable without them to protect her and help her control her power. It was already too powerful to fully command. Tonight had made that clear. Magic was normally something that lived harmoniously in a witch’s blood and worked with them. It chose them as its carrier. Different genes attracted different magic. Her family had always had strong old magic but hers had never reacted the way it had this evening. She was sure that it had wanted to protect Taig. She just wasn’t sure why.

  Her hand rose of its own volition and came to rest against her chest and the mark there. She couldn’t read the path, could only understand the symbols and their individual meaning. Her magic knew the path though. Taig was important somehow. Perhaps more so than she had first thought.

  Lealandra looked at him, taking the time to refresh her memory of his profile as he drove, his focus intent on the empty black road ahead. Lights created a rhythm to his backdrop, whizzing past, punctuating the darkness at intervals that got shorter and shorter as Taig accelerated. He never had cared if the police caught him and his senses and reactions were quick enough to help him avoid an accident.

  “What happened the night that Charlie died?” he said, breaking the silence that she had been enjoying.

  “I told you.”

  “Then tell me again.”

  Lealandra sighed. She didn’t want to remember what had happened that night. She had tried hard to forget it all and she had managed to gain some distance from her feelings. If she talked about it now, everything would come flooding back again.

  Taig needed to know though. Maybe he would see it differently to her or notice something that she hadn’t.

  “We were sitting together watching some stupid reality television show that he loved. Isabelle was supposed to be watching with us but she was running late. I was telling him about the ascension mark.” She held her feelings inside, not letting them control her, not even when her throat began to tighten and her hands trembled in her lap. She played with the ties of her black skirt, jingling the bells to distract her so she could tell Taig everything without falling apart.

  “Had he seen it?”

  She nodded and then remembered that he was looking ahead of them, at the road. “Yes.”

  “Bet he was pissed off.” Taig smiled, oddly proud looking.

  Lealandra gave a short laugh when she realised why and remembered Charlie’s reaction to seeing Taig’s mark emblazoned on her chest.

  “Yeah, he was. He said it was typical of you to stick your oar in without even being around.” Her smile faded and she sighed again. “I think he was a little jealous.”

  She could understand why. All witches had a mark too, something specific to them. Charlie’s mark hadn’t been present. Taig’s had taken a prominent place. It had probably hurt him to see that Taig would be involved in her ascension somehow, in an important enough way for his mark to appear in her path. Charlie had always loved her. And she felt terrible that she hadn’t loved him.

  “What happened after that?” Taig glanced at her.

  “After that… I told you what happened.” She couldn’t bring herself to say it again. It all played out across her mind. One moment she was teasing Charlie about his jealousy, laughing with him about the stupid things that humans did for the sake of getting on television, and then there was blood all over her and he was dead. She hadn’t even heard the gun fire. She blanched and swallowed. There had been so much blood, and Charlie had just been sitting there, stock still, head blown open.

  She pressed her hand over her mouth.

  Taig’s hand came to rest on her shoulder, heavy and solid, a weight that comforted her. His cool skin soon warmed to match hers but she fancied it was a degree or two colder, enough that she noticed it when she focused on the spot where he touched her.

  “Breathe, Lea. Let it go,” he whispered and she closed her eyes. Before she could stop herself, she had turned her head to the side, brought her shoulder up, and was resting her cheek against his fingers. A tear slid down the side of her face and tickled her.

  “It was a few days after that when they told me the type of bullet used and the sort of guns that fired it. I didn’t believe them, Taig. Not for a second.”

  “And you told them.”

  She nodded against his hand.

  “And then you told them about your ascension.”

  She nodded again.

  “And then someone wrote that message on your wall.”

  Lealandra stiffened, the memory of waking to find that scrawled on her wall turning her blood to ice. She trembled and Taig’s hand tightened against her shoulder.

  “And then you left.”

  “Something like that,” she whispered against his skin. It was so comforting to be close to him like this. Not just because she could feel his power, but because she could feel him and she needed that more than anything. She wanted him to stop the car and hold her, to tell her that he wouldn’t let anything happen to her and that they would be safe. His hand was cool against her burning cheek. She turned her head a fraction, so her lips were close to his knuckles. If she kissed them like she wanted to, she would only be making a fool of herself and getting herself into trouble. Taig would respond, no doubt about that judging from his behaviour so far tonight, but she wouldn’t know if it was real or just done to spite her. She wouldn’t know if he would wait until she had opened up her heart to him again and then say something as cold as he had after their last kiss.

  She couldn’t bear that.

  “You suspect the coven don’t you?” he said and she sat up when he took his hand back and turned the car to the right.

  She didn’t recognise the area. It looked like the Upper East Side but he hadn’t lived there six years ago. Perhaps they were just passing through, taking a different route up towards the bridge that would take them over into the Bronx. There were demon communities on that side of the river too.

  “I suspect everyone.” She felt his eyes come to rest on her.

  “Even me?”

  Silence.

  Lealandra didn’t want to answer that question.

  CHAPTER 7

  Taig pulled the car to a halt just down the road and turned off the engine. It was unmistakably the Upper East Side.

  “We can walk from here.” He exited the car.

  Lealandra followed, confused as to why he had brought her to such an affluent neighbourhood. She had thought he was taking her to his place. They walked for a while, passing beautiful apartment buildings and high-end expensive stores. When he turned and walked into a tall building, she paused on the pavement. The old sandstone façade was as graceful and stunning as those they had passed, exuding class and a high rental price tag with its elegant canopied walkway that extended out to the road. She stared at the uniformed man stood holding the highly polished glass door open. Taig lived here now?

  Taig came back out, her bag in his left hand. Her raised eyebrows didn’t fall even when she looked at him. They stayed there in silent question.

  He shrugged. “I fancied a change.”

  A change? She followed him in when he turned around and glanced at the doorman as she passed him. This was more than a change. Taig’s old apartment had demons for neighbours and rats in the garbage, and the only doorman had been the superintendant, a demon who had over-indulged in food to the extent that he barely fit in his human skin and liked nothing more than sitting on the steps terrorizing the local women with failed amorous advances. This was a whole new world for Taig. She studied the bright cream corridors with their perfectly polished brass and mirrors, and the polite staff that stopped cleaning as she approached and smiled at her as she passed. This was a very human world.

  The only demon in the vicinity was
Taig.

  Had things gotten that bad since she had left him? Her shoulders slumped. Was she the reason he had moved? She hadn’t left him because he was a demon. Only afterwards had she considered what kind of effect her leaving might have had on him. She had convinced herself that it wouldn’t have pushed the wrong buttons. Obviously it had and in a major way.

  Taig looked back at her. A hint of nerves touched his eyes for some reason and she smiled, hoping to alleviate whatever was playing on his mind. When he turned away again, her smile faded. She stared at his broad shoulders and the back of his head. This wasn’t his world. He didn’t belong here. A couple exited an apartment ahead, waving farewell to someone standing in the door. Lealandra guessed from their outfits that the party they had attended well into the early hours of morning wasn’t the sort that would wake the neighbours and have the police banging down the door. The man wore a fine suit and the woman carried off a sparkling plum-coloured cocktail dress to perfection. Their laughter died when they spotted Taig and her. Lealandra’s eyes met the woman’s as they passed. Disgust shone in them.

  This was their world, a human world of rules and societal structure, one in which Taig would never fit. He was the opposite of these people. Money and finery weren’t things that he lived for. He was fooling himself by being here. Did he think that by standing in this world, surrounded by this kind of human, he would become one of them? They would never accept him.

  Not if they knew the real him.

  He stopped at a wide mahogany door, opened it and walked in, leaving it open for her. She peered in to see him slinging her black holdall onto an equally black couch in a large living room. He came back and turned into the room to her right.

  Lealandra frowned when she stepped through the doorway and something tugged at her power. She turned and closed the door, and then froze when she saw the wooden doorframe.

  Cuneiform-like symbols covered the wood, scratched deep into it. She couldn’t understand them, just as Taig didn’t understand the ancient language of witches, but they radiated power in waves so strong that she felt sick and her magic retreated. She looked at Taig where he stood in the brightly lit kitchen, rummaging through a massive dark red refrigerator.

  “I take it you don’t invite the neighbours in.” Markings like the ones on his doorframe would make humans question his sanity.

  He didn’t answer her. He kept his head in the refrigerator.

  When he straightened at last, he was holding two dark brown bottles of beer in his right hand, their necks wedged between his fingers.

  “Drink?” He grinned and waggled the bottles.

  He was ignoring her. She nodded and he opened the beers and handed one to her. She swigged it and walked further into the apartment.

  It was sparsely furnished and the refrigerator provided the only colour. Everything else was either black or white. The pale walls caused the already huge apartment to appear massive. The kitchen cupboards were shiny and black, matching the polished granite work surfaces below them and on the long counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. A flat screen television that had to be over fifty inches took up a large portion of the wall to her right at the end of the living area, and a large black couch faced it, devoid of pillows and as lifeless as the empty black coffee table and the rest of the apartment.

  She walked towards the couch, her footsteps loud on the wooden floor.

  It looked like a showroom for expensive designer furniture and minimalist living. Not the Taig that she knew. It didn’t suit him.

  A closer look at the black door to the right of the television revealed that there were also markings on that doorframe. She turned to the two huge windows on her left, opposite the kitchen. The black blinds were up. Symbols covered the wooden window frames and sills.

  Taig might have moved into human territory to feel more like them but his protective instincts had gone haywire because of it. Surrounded by demons, he hadn’t needed to defend himself to this extent. The other demons he had lived with would have alerted everyone if they had sensed something wrong. Out here, in this human world, Taig was alone.

  And it showed.

  Lealandra took another swig of the beer and stared out of the windows at the myriad of buildings that crowded the scenery. She couldn’t see Central Park but it was there somewhere. They were facing west. Taig always liked his apartments to face west. It was a demon thing. He had never been able to explain it rationally but she suspected it had something to do with the setting sun and the onset of night.

  Night was on its way out right now. The sky was slowly lightening. She looked around the apartment for a clock but found none. No pictures or anything personal adorned the walls and table in front of her. Nothing that made it feel lived in, like a home. She wrapped one arm about herself and frowned. The whole place felt cold and lifeless. Was that how he felt inside? Was this void a physical representation of what Taig held within him?

  She didn’t like it. It wasn’t Taig, no matter how much he believed it was.

  He moved out of the kitchen, leaned his broad frame against the counter next to the square white column at the corner nearest the front door, and swigged his beer. The messy black spikes of his hair threatened to cover his equally dark eyes. He had them glued on her and they sparkled under the white ceiling spotlights.

  What had happened to the man she had fallen for all those years ago?

  Lealandra took a step towards him but he walked away, disappearing into the room beside the television. She rocked back on her heels when she caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye. It was odd and as out of place as Taig was in this stark environment, but it gave her hope. She walked over to the long black side cupboard that lined the back wall of the apartment and stared at it.

  A picture.

  It sat alone on the expansive low cupboard, right in the middle of it, as though on display. The only sign of life. A glimmer of the Taig she used to know.

  The picture was no bigger than six inches tall and framed with silver. She lowered her beer to her side and studied the photograph it contained.

  A dark haired and dark eyed very handsome man was smiling up at her. In his arms, a lighter haired pretty woman stood with her back against his chest. He had his arms looped under hers and his fingers tangled with hers over her stomach. Her pregnant stomach. It was large and round, stretching the seams of the flowing white top the woman wore. She looked happy enough to burst. They both did. They radiated love so strongly that Lealandra felt a hint of envy. Her gaze fell to their hands, clasped together over their future baby.

  Taig.

  It was such a human picture and a very human thing for him to have. It sent a chill through her, made her smile but want to cry at the same time for the things he had lost. His parents. She was sure if they had still been alive, he would have grown up differently. He would have seen his demonic power as a gift rather than a curse.

  She reached out to touch it.

  “Don’t!” Taig’s voice made her jump, the harshness and volume of it startling in the quiet room.

  Lealandra withdrew her hand and then held it out a little again, fingers hovering just above the intricate markings engraved on the silver picture frame. It exuded power more potent than that protecting the doors and the windows. She closed her eyes and tried to understand it, tried to decipher what it would do if she dared to touch it. It was marked so only he could take hold of it. Her eyes opened and she stared at the photograph of his parents as her power deciphered his. It would kill anyone other than him.

  He was protecting the picture more than his apartment.

  Lealandra looked over her shoulder at him. He stood halfway between the bedroom door and her, shirtless and perfect, as beautiful as she remembered him. Bronzed skin stretched taut over the powerful muscles of his torso, the sight of them rekindling the desire he had stirred with his kiss in the bar. Her gaze wandered upwards, over hard pectorals and strong collarbones to the tense corded muscles
of his neck, and then to his face. All sense of desire fell away when she saw his lost look and the way he was staring at the picture.

  Her heart went out to him.

  Taig turned away and pulled a black t-shirt on over his head, and her eyes betrayed her. They dropped to his back, watching the delightful way his muscles shifted with his movements. The mark on his left shoulder blade was barely visible, a shade or two darker than his skin. His lineage. A symbol so intricate and beautiful that it outshone any witch’s mark. She had traced it with her fingers in the past, following the swirling lines and trying to distinguish their path. The whole symbol looked almost like a heart. Taig didn’t see it, but then he never had liked to talk about his mark.

  He never liked to talk about himself at all. He hadn’t told her much about his parents, only that his mother was human and his father was a powerful demon, and that they had disappeared when he was thirteen and he believed they were dead.

  She couldn’t imagine how hard it had been for him to lose his parents when he was only a teenager, how hard it must have been for him to live not knowing what had happened to them, and how difficult growing up alone had been. He had gone from a world full of love to one completely devoid of it.

  Taig walked away, back into the bedroom, and reappeared a few moments later with a pillow and a blanket.

  “You take the room. I’ll sleep out here.” He flung the pillow down at one end of the black couch.

  His prickly demeanour was a warning not to argue and that he wanted to be alone. Lealandra took another look at the photograph, at the happy family, and then grabbed her bag off the couch and went into his bedroom. It was as void of life as his living room and kitchen, with a solitary large double bed standing against a black wall, and two small side cupboards. The wardrobes were built-in, white to match the rest of the walls, and the black blinds on the two windows were down, blocking out the morning light. She opened them and idly traced her fingers over the markings on the frames as she stared out at the dawn.