My Forbidden Desire

by Carolyn Jewel

  “Gee.” Alexandrine took a step nearer to Xia and gave him a panicked glance. Her eyes were dilated to the point where there was practically no visible iris. “I have a funny feeling your kind of power isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. After all, from what I hear, Carson Philips didn’t have any and look at what she managed. Magellan dead. Kynan Aijan on the loose. Xia footloose and fancy-free.”

  “Carson Philips is bound to the warlord Nikodemus,” Rasmus said. “Of course she can now do interesting things.” He looked Alexandrine up and down. “Could it be?” He waved a hand. “Durian, if she doesn’t leave in the next ten seconds, kill her. I don’t care how you do it. If you want her first, by all means. Just see that she’s dead when you’re done.”

  “See?” Alexandrine said. “That’s what I mean about you guys. That’s just not right.” She swayed on her feet, and Xia got some of the backlash from her. She was feeling the effects of him pulling through her. “Xia, now would be a good time to take care of things, please.”

  Xia punched through to the center of Durian’s magic. The mageheld stiffened. The result wasn’t anything like the kin-to-kin connection Xia was used to. As far as Xia’s magic was concerned, Durian remained a nullity. Yet he did feel the other fiend’s magic. Durian’s power resonated, and right there at the center of everything was magic that didn’t belong. Magic that felt more like Alexandrine’s than his.

  “Time’s up,” Rasmus said.

  Xia touched the pulsing gnarl with the magic of one of the magekind, but he was a southpaw trying to write with his right hand. Everything felt wrong and backward. Durian lay a hand on Alexandrine’s shoulder, and through the contact, Xia felt the mageheld’s compulsion to act. He also felt Durian’s anticipation—a coldhearted and joyful anticipation of killing one of the magekind. He wasn’t interested in sex. What he wanted was to kill Alexandrine and pretend he was killing Rasmus. Wasn’t that a familiar feeling?

  Alexandrine could have tried to save herself. She had his knife. With that, she had a good shot at killing anything within reach of the blade. But she didn’t, because she was waiting for Xia to sever Durian or explode something or fry Rasmus where he stood. With no change in expression, Durian slid his hands around Alexandrine’s throat.

  “Now, fiend,” Durian said to Xia. He’d figured it out, then, what Alexandrine was to him. Their eyes connected. “Do what you must now, or it will be too late.” Under Rasmus’s compulsion, the defiant delay cost him. Durian’s eyes flared copper red as his fingers tightened around Alexandrine’s neck. She grabbed the mageheld’s hands, but he bent her head back and kept up the pressure.

  Xia battered at the knot in the core of Durian’s magic. He didn’t know how to unravel it. He could see it, could feel it pulsing, but the goddamned mage magic didn’t work the same way as his.

  At least Rasmus wasn’t trying to take him anymore. No, the bastard was watching Durian strangle his daughter. The hell with this cutting-the-knot crap. He sent a shot of her magic into Durian and freaking burst the thing apart. If it killed the mageheld, too damn bad.

  Durian’s scream echoed off the walls, but his fingers remained frozen around Alexandrine’s throat. She got her hands between his arms and broke his hold on her. The mageheld—make that former mageheld, because Xia could feel him normally now, like a ton of bricks on fire—staggered back, palms pressed to his chest. Alexandrine fell to her knees, sucking air.

  Rasmus was as good as dead.

  The mage took a step forward, then came to a halt. He knew he’d lost Durian; the fear showed in his eyes. Poor little mage. He’d lost control of his killer, and now he was all alone with a fiend—make that two—who’d spent a lot of time dreaming about killing him. With an inchoate cry, the mage rushed Alexandrine. Magic seethed in the air. He grabbed her by her upper arms and yanked her up. “You little fool! What have you done?” He slapped Alexandrine hard enough to whip her head back. She took it with hardly a flinch. “They’ll kill us now if I can’t get them back.”

  “No,” Alexandrine said slowly. “I think they’ll kill you.”

  “Durian!” Xia shouted. But the former mageheld was on his knees, fighting to stay upright.

  Goddamn, his body hurt. Xia lurched toward Rasmus and Alexandrine. He felt Durian, though there was something kind of jacked up about that, and he still had a handle on Alexandrine’s magic and a direct connection to her. The talisman’s magic fired off in her, too, making her feel like kin to him, to Durian, and probably to Rasmus.

  Xia’s body turned to ice. Everything happened all at once and overlapped.

  Rasmus pulled, and the talisman’s magic in Alexandrine boiled over. The mage yelped and leapt back, but he knew one of the kin when he felt one, and he was at last feeling that in Alexandrine. With a smile, he tried to take the part of Alexandrine that was kin. Xia felt the mage’s magic at work. “He’s in control of you, isn’t he?” Rasmus said to her. “All this time, he’s been working you.”

  “No, he’s not.”

  Xia’s heart went cold as Alexandrine’s upper body bowed back under Rasmus’s assault on her kin magic. Xia went after her, but his body wasn’t cooperating well enough yet. He wasn’t as fast as he needed to be.

  Pure fiend-driven chaos ripped through the room. That was him, losing it. She wavered on her feet as Xia lost control, unable to focus the magic burning through her and without a focus for his magic, either. He was going to end up flaming her out if this kept up. He shoved himself into Alexandrine’s head without asking permission, and that gave him what he needed—information about how she’d worked her magic when it belonged to her. She dropped to her knees again, wheezing in short, abortive breaths. Rasmus was doing that to her. At the same time he felt the mage taking control of the talisman’s magic, Alexandrine screamed. He felt her pain. Shared it and tried to stop what was happening. Xia got air into her lungs despite Rasmus.

  They drew a deep breath, but Xia didn’t dare ease up. Her demon-bound magic scoured them both, but he knew how to deal with it now. The problem was his choices were limited if he was going to keep Alexandrine alive. He could take over her body and use it to kill Rasmus, or he could make her his demonheld before Rasmus took her first. Neither choice worked. He couldn’t use Alexandrine to kill. Not like that. She’d never forgive him. And he sure as hell wouldn’t take her mageheld.

  Durian slumped against the wall, hands clutching his chest. The fiend looked out of it. Xia knew the feeling. Back when Carson had severed him, he’d passed out. Well, too bad for the assassin. He directed some of the fire raging through him into the other fiend. “Get over it, Durian,” he said. “Make yourself useful.”

  Meanwhile, Rasmus was at least having to work at taking Alexandrine. The mage pulled hard enough that ice formed on the walls. Xia made it to her just as Rasmus released his magic again. A streak of boiling light headed directly for her. The blast hit her shoulder instead of her head, but she still shut down mentally. The mage’s second strike was aimed at him. The air above them started popping. Hail hit the floor.

  Xia kept his hold on Alexandrine, shielding her from Rasmus’s assault as best he could. Alexandrine staggered to her feet, his knife clenched in her hand. She made a sound, not unlike a sob. She put his knife on the floor and kicked it toward him.

  “Alexandrine,” he said. “Take Durian with you and get out. Now.”

  Chapter 28

  Alexandrine lunged for the door on legs made of over-cooked noodles. After a heart-stopping moment when she thought they were locked in the room, she found the mechanism that disengaged the hardware. Freaking lock! The metal door felt odd when she touched it, as if there were an energy source inside. Her fingers tingled. Freaky. She yanked open the door and whirled, expecting Xia and Durian to be right behind her, ready to get the hell out. They weren’t. Durian was barely halfway to the door, and he didn’t look so hot, and Xia was still with Rasmus.

  She went back for Durian and grabbed his arm. His skin was hot to the
touch. “Move it, buster.”

  All around them, the air alternately sizzled and froze. Rasmus might be down, but he was far from powerless. Xia knelt over her father, his head bowed like he was praying. Her heart collapsed in on itself at the sight. Hadn’t that been what Xia wanted all along, more than anything? His moment alone with her father. Ruthlessly, she cut off the emotion; there wasn’t time to think about anything but needing to get Xia on his feet and running out the door with her and Durian. Not praying over a body, for crying out loud. Xia clutched the hilt of his knife in both hands and held it over her father’s chest.

  “Xia!” she shouted.

  There wasn’t any blood that she could see, not even on the blade. Rasmus’s legs twitched in a trying-to-escape kind of kick rather than a waning-seconds-of-life thing. She still wasn’t used to not feeling her magic; even worse, the way her father’s power came at her through the talisman’s magic completely disconcerted her. It was like looking at the world through the back of a mirror. Everything familiar was reversed. Her pulse thumped hard. They weren’t out of danger, not by any means. Rasmus was still alive in a house full of magehelds.

  Her father’s wide-open eyes were fixed on Xia; however, the alarming thing wasn’t the rage in his face but his moving lips. He was pulling. Her demon magic vibrated with it. A part of her wanted to be closer to that much power. The sound of running thundered from upstairs.

  “Xia!” she yelled again. “He’s calling his magehelds.” She could feel Xia, kin to kin, the way she felt Durian now. It was trippy, that connection to the two fiends. She had no idea how to interpret what she was getting from either of them. “Whatever you’re going to do, Xia, do it now or give it up.” Shit, this was going to hell. She gave up on getting any reaction from Durian. She ran to Xia and grabbed him by the arm. “We have to go. Now.”

  Xia kept muttering, and she didn’t know what to do, because the place where her magic used to be was one huge void, and she had no idea how to use the magic she did have. He was using his magic right now, not hers.

  Upstairs, something screamed.

  “There’s no time,” she said. Xia turned his head, and for a moment, there she was in his head. She dropped out almost as quickly as she’d dropped in. His irises were white, his pupils huge black discs, his mouth a grimace.“If you’re not going to kill him, Xia, disable him. Now.”

  “Get out,” he said. He shoved his knife into her hands.

  “Not without you.” She went to her knees. Xia was locked in some kind of mental battle with her father, and it had to end. One way or another. She put a hand on Xia’s shoulder and practically fried from the heat of their connection. Her body streaked with pain at the amount of magic Xia was holding. Hers and his, and it hurt. She’d never pulled anything like that amount of magic, and she had nothing left to cushion the effect.

  Rasmus was wearing his ruby ring on his thumb. Alexandrine reached out and caught his wrist, pinning it to the floor. With shaking hands, she pulled the ring off his thumb. Rasmus’s body bowed off the floor, and he shouted what she guessed was an obscenity in his native language, whatever that might be. But the magic flowing between him and Xia didn’t stop. Taking his talisman away from him wasn’t enough to stop what he was doing.

  “Durian!” she shouted.

  Durian was leaning against the wall with his knees bent and his hands on his thighs, but at her yell, he looked up.

  “Catch.” She tossed the ring across the room. He managed to move his hands, but not in any coordinated fashion. The ruby clinked at Durian’s feet. Nothing changed with Rasmus. He was still able to use the talisman. “Shit.”

  In desperation, she grabbed Xia’s knife and dove for the ring at Durian’s feet. She slid part of the way there and ended up rolling into Durian’s shins. But the ring was in her hand and that’s all that mattered. She got her legs underneath her and did the only thing she could think of, which was to grab hold of what little magic she had—the hell with not knowing how it worked. She just opened herself wide and plunged the point of Xia’s knife into the stone.

  Everything stopped.

  Or else she went deaf and dumb and blind to magic.

  Rasmus’s body went limp, and his head lolled to one side. There wasn’t time to figure out what had happened for sure. His chest was still moving, so he wasn’t dead. Pity or not? Who knew? She shoved the damaged ring into her pocket and scrambled toward Xia. Behind her, she heard Durian breathing hard.

  She grabbed Xia by both arms. Hell, even Xia was loopy. She shook him hard, and his eyes came back from whatever hell he’d been visiting. “Can you walk? Or do I need to carry you? Because I will, if I have to.”

  She watched him focus on her until his eyes practically crossed. “I love you, Alexandrine,” he said.

  “You’re delirious, sweetie.” Right. Wouldn’t do for her to forget that Xia hated what she was. They were going to have to deal with that later, when they weren’t in immediate danger of death and destruction.

  Durian was the next problem. He was on his feet and stable enough, she supposed. He stared at Rasmus with a murderous gleam. With Xia in tow, she went to him and grabbed his arm, too. The former mageheld didn’t look so hot. His face was ashen, and beads of sweat formed along his upper lip and dripped down his temples. The smell of blood from him was stronger than before.

  “Can you make it out on your own?”

  He managed to pull himself away from the wall. One palm stayed pressed to his sternum. The other one was bright with blood. “Yes.”

  “Great, because it’s time to go, boys.”

  Crap. Whoever was upstairs was heading downstairs now. Something fell hard. She couldn’t feel them, but she didn’t know if that was because whatever was coming for them was mageheld, or whether she wasn’t close enough to feel them, or if she’d flamed out and couldn’t feel anything. At this point, she wasn’t sure if she could feel anything magical anymore.

  “Whatever’s coming at us from up there is mageheld,” she said. “They should still read me as a witch, so let’s hope Rasmus didn’t release them. You two, behind me,” she said. “Do it now.”

  They went out like that, with her taking the point. Not so much because she’d taken command as because she was the only one who wasn’t completely strung out yet. God knows Xia wasn’t himself; Rasmus would be deader than dead if he was. And Durian was worthless right now. She closed the metal door after them, getting that strange deadening in her hands when she touched it. Her back itched the entire time she was exposed to the stairs. Xia turned around and did something to the door that made her head freeze solid.

  “Is there another way out?” she asked Durian. “A back door? A window? A secret tunnel?” That last was a joke but nobody laughed. Not even her. Durian and Xia both shook their heads. “Then up we go.” She touched Xia’s shoulder. He flinched. Great. Now he worse than couldn’t stand her. He didn’t even want her touching him. Which would piss her off if she had the time for it. She sank onto the riser above Xia and Durian. “Listen up,” she said.

  Xia’s eyes cycled through all the shades of blue again, starting and ending with azure-streaked white. “What?”

  “Have I flamed out?” Her heart raced to her throat. The noises from upstairs weren’t happy ones. She had a still-loopy Xia, a worthless Durian, no sense of magic herself, and a houseful of magehelds headed their way. Xia’s knife was an awesome weapon, but she didn’t see herself taking down the dozen or so fiends about to descend on them. “Xia, is there any more of my magic left?”

  He swallowed. “Yeah.”

  “For crying out loud, Xia. Read my mind, would you?” She was too stressed out to care about anybody’s feelings. “Yes, there’s magic, or yes, I’ve flamed out?”

  “Yes, there’s magic left.” He touched his fingertip to her forehead, and a connection opened between them. She didn’t feel any magic, though. Not his. Not hers. Not Durian’s. All she felt was him in her head.

  “It’ll be all
right,” he said.

  Right. All she had to do was get used to vanilla. “Xia,” she said. “It’s time to find out if you severing Durian was a fluke or if you can do it again.” She figured that was their best shot at getting out—if they severed as many magehelds as they could.

  “We just need to be close enough,” he replied. He put a hand on her shoulder, the better to pull from her, she supposed, because her stomach filled with ice. Upstairs, something shrieked like a banshee. Xia’s irises flashed between neon and midnight blue.

  The three of them stood and started climbing the stairs again. With the doorway in sight, Alexandrine came to a halt. For one thing, she was light-headed. For another, the running around upstairs had stopped. Abruptly. The hair on the back of her neck stood up. Her surroundings disappeared. Everything she ever was in her life focused on the stairs and on not falling over in a dead faint.

  The first of Rasmus’s magehelds appeared at the top of the stairs. Jiminy Cricket, he was a monster. Not in literal form. Just a general observation on the creature she had to face down without a lick of magic to help. You’re a witch, and he’s a mageheld. Repeat as necessary. You’re a witch, and he’s a mageheld. He can’t hurt you, and he has to do what you tell him.

  He was bigger than Xia and damn near as scary. What hair he had was dark. Three cobalt stripes ran down the left side of his face, starting at the midline of his left eye and moving outward toward his temple. The first stripe actually colored his eyeball. He held a dead fiend by the back of his collar. Oh, yuck. One of his hands was bloody. He was handsome, with a smile to die for that was even creepier than the hand-sized hole where the dead fiend’s heart ought to be.