Night Magic: A Wing Slayer Novel

by Jennifer Lyon

  He reached for his knife before the voice registered. But then recognition hit, and he realized Darcy was projecting her voice through his BlackBerry on the floor. Desperate, he grabbed it and said, “You’ll help her?”

  “I’ll try. Carla’s working on gathering more help from the Circle Witches. But we need to connect with Ailish’s magic. Can you feel her power at all?”

  He looked down at the witch bleeding all over his couch and floor. Her witch-shimmer was the color of dried mud, with ugly red holes from the pain. She had to be in agony. He felt only fading power. “Just residual magic from using her siren voice power, I guess.”

  “Trying,” Ailish said, squeezing her eyes closed in concentration and fisting her hands. Then she hissed in pain and relaxed back into unconsciousness.

  “Darcy! What do we do?” He fought down his impatience during the long seconds of silence. Darcy was very powerful, and Phoenix assumed she was assessing Ailish with her third eye.

  Then Darcy spoke in a steady, confident voice: “Her chakras are closed. You’re her soul mirror, you can help her open them. If you choose to do it.”

  The thought that he could just let her die and go back to his life as he knew it whispered in his mind. No more feeling the chains of the past, the cage of caring too damned much, of having to worry every second about someone else.

  He looked at her pale face, her dark eyelashes lying against the fine scars. She groaned, starting to surface again, and shivers began racking her body. It was terrible to see, her arm torn open, blood everywhere, her tight body shivering. He couldn’t stand it. His biceps began burning, and he knew it wasn’t a choice at all. He never walked away from a woman in trouble, not as long as he had the power to help her.

  Her eyelids fluttered, then opened, and her teeth chattered.

  He wouldn’t let her die, so he set down the phone where Darcy could still hear him, then reached out, laying his hand on Ailish’s face. “I’ll do whatever it takes. Tell me how to help her.”

  “Move her clothes so you can touch her from pelvis to heart.”

  “Whose voice?” Ailish asked through her chattering teeth.

  “Darcy, a witch. She’s on the phone and helping us.” He took his hand from her face and quickly undid her pants. Spreading the sides, he glanced down and saw her black panties against her olive skin. They were thin and flush against her, clearly illustrating that she was perfectly smooth beneath them. Bare. Hairless. His blood heated while disgust at his reaction to an injured woman got him focused. He turned his attention to her tight bra top.

  He pulled out his knife and slid the tip beneath the elastic bottom.

  She flinched and sluggishly tried to grab the knife with her left hand. “No.”

  He was hit by renewed urgency at her pathetic defense. This was the witch who had kicked him onto his ass. He moved swiftly, shoving her hand away and slicing the top. He spread the edges apart, exposing her small, perfect breasts.

  She started to shake with more violence. Hell with this. He shoved his knife in the holster at his back, stood, and moved to the back of the couch. Then he leaned down and picked her up, holding her against him. Trying to warm her. Moving back to the couch, he said, “Not going to hurt you. Won’t let anyone hurt you.” Her jeans slid halfway down her hips, her top hung off her. He didn’t care, it was just them.

  He sat down, and she turned her face into his leather vest. “Won’t be a demon witch if I die now.”

  He cradled her against him. There was no way she could lie to him now, with her blood draining onto his thighs, her body trembling, her skin so damned cold. Whatever she’d done in the past, she didn’t want to be a demon witch now. He believed her. He laid her hips on his thighs and her shoulders in the curve of his right arm. Her right arm rested on his knees. “Ailish, stay with me now. I need you awake.”

  Her eyes fluttered.

  He put his hand on her pelvic bone to try to coax her chakras open.

  Her stomach jumped, and his hand tingled. He felt a flash of hope and dragged his hand up and over the cold skin on her stomach, ignoring the sexy dips and ridges of her muscles. He drew his fingers up between her breasts. He tried not to notice the small swells with sweet puckered nipples. Instead, he spread his hand over her heart. “Come on, Ailish, open your chakras,” he coaxed. He could feel something stirring to life inside her, some energy beginning to bubble.

  “Trying,” she said.

  Damn it, he could feel her slipping. Feel her body tiring of the fight. “Darcy, anything?”

  From the phone, she said, “Not yet. We’re trying to send her more power, but we need her chakras open. She’s running out of time. Push her, do anything to get her power to recognize you.”

  How? His gaze caught on her nipples. If he touched the sensitive tips, would it jog her chakras open? He wanted to save her, not molest her. No time for moral debates! He slid his fingers around the base to cup her breast gently, then touched the pad of his thumb to her nipple.

  She hissed, her stomach tightened, and her hips jerked. Then her magic washed over him in a misty spray, weak and evaporating almost as soon as it touched him. “You’re doing it. Focus.” He willed her to fight, moving his hand down to her panties and back up. He could feel the answering quiver of her magic.

  Startled, he realized her powers were responding to him. Following him.

  “Okay, I feel her magic. Three of us are circling our magic, trying to help her,” Darcy said.

  Ailish had her eyes closed in concentration, obviously trying to capture the power and focus the healing energy to the wound on her arm. Her skin was sweaty, her shimmer still filled with pain holes. He had to help her direct her magic to where she needed it.

  Now that he was committed to saving her, he refused to fail. Determined to win this battle, he lifted his hand, then settled it carefully over her wound. He sucked in his breath, her blood coating his palm, followed by the power rush. It tore through his veins and hit his brain like a sledgehammer. Her magic was pouring into him, and his head buzzed. Clarity of thought was a sunburst in his mind.

  More. More blood, more power, take it all! Own it. Cut and don’t stop until—

  “Phoenix!” Darcy shouted. “What did you do?”

  He shook his head hard, trying to dislodge the darkly seductive thoughts. “Pull back your powers!” he told Ailish.

  “Can’t get control,” she groaned.

  Fuck. He was getting too much; her powers were racing past her wounds in some elemental attempt to get to him, to bind with him. They were soaking into his cells and pickling his brain. He’d seen a witch hunter blooded before and knew the insanity would take hold. Panting, he yanked his hand off her wound. “Darcy, I touched her blood.”

  Ailish lay limp; even her witch-shimmer was weaker. The sight made his gut twist, and the skin of his biceps began to burn again.

  “Phoenix, listen to me!” Darcy said, her voice urgent as she projected it through the phone. “It’s the soul-mirror bond. It requires the blood exchange. Her power felt you and is trying to finish the bond. It’s seeking your blood. Give her your blood.”

  He reached back and pulled out his knife. The lights bounced off the silver blade. This act would bind them tighter. Both the soul-mirror and probably the siren-phoenix connection.

  But he looked down at her face. He thought of her telling him that no witches would help her. Everyone had been afraid of the consequences. He hadn’t fully believed her, not until now. No one was willing to go up against a demon to fight for this witch.

  “Until now,” Phoenix said. He lifted his palm and sliced it. The flash of pain was nothing to him. But as he watched the blood well up, he thought about what he was doing—binding them tighter. Going one step closer to becoming true soul mirrors.

  Her protector. She would come to rely on him, and then there would come a moment when he didn’t get there in time. She’d need him and he’d fail her. Even without the handfast, Ailish was blind! So many
things could happen to her. If he grew to care about her, and then she died …

  She was dying now! Pulling back from his dark thoughts, he reached across her to lay his bleeding palm on her massive cut.

  The utterly cold darkness of death terrified Ailish. She could feel her life force draining from her.

  Where would she go? Would the Ancestors accept her? How could they? She was promised to a demon. She had tried to learn what an earth witch was and then tried to live as one. She had searched and searched for ways to break the handfast, but she had failed.

  The Ancestors wouldn’t want her.

  The crushing terror and darkness pulled her down and down, sinking like a rock into nothingness. She heard Phoenix calling her, but she couldn’t answer. She had a spark of power, but then even that left her, flowing out of her with her blood.

  The icy horror made even her bones shiver. Would this be her eternity? Dark, cold nothingness?

  Then a bloom of life-giving heat spread from her arm inward. Sweeping through her to reach all her muscles and bones, going down to her very cells. It fed something in her, a hunger that had been gnawing silently at her since birth, suddenly satiated. A vibrant energy flowed into her chakras, filling them with power. Not her power, but that of other witches.

  Earth witches.

  She felt her body arch under the waves of healing magic, and she reached up to grab on to the warm arm.

  “Breathe,” Phoenix said, his voice an anchor in the maelstrom of swirling magic and the pain of healing muscles, veins, and skin. Her body kept filling, and she became vividly aware of Phoenix. The scent of leather, soap, and musk, his arm beneath her shoulders holding her against his chest. His powerful thighs under her butt and back.

  Then the sensation of magic from other witches faded away.

  “Ailish,” he said in a low, gentle voice. “You’re healing. The cut’s nearly closed, your witch-shimmer is warming to dazzling gold.”

  The pain was draining off, and she was filled with an incredible well-being, a sense of wonderment. “I felt them. I still feel you.” Opening her eyes, she saw his shadow over her. “Is this real?”

  He brushed her hair back. “What?”

  It was leaving now, but she felt it. “Witches really helped me? You helped me?” She had felt their magic, and it was wondrous.

  “It’s real. The witches have left now, but they helped.”

  She saw his shadow closing in on her, his deeply masculine scent covering her, then his kiss. The damp heat of his mouth ignited her magic into a frenzy of sparkles from her pelvis to her chest. Phoenix tasted like a rich tea with a hint of dark spices. She couldn’t get enough, and she lifted her head into the kiss, tasting him. Her magic rushed, her skin tingled, and her entire being felt as if it were reaching, seeking, trying to absorb him into her.

  Phoenix made a noise deep in his chest, and his kiss grew deeper, fiercer. He dragged his hand from her healed arm to stroke his palm back and forth over her nipple.

  Bright, hot sensations swelled in her breast and mixed with her magic. Her body arched, desperate for more of his touch, to feel him closer. Desire thickened, urgency and need mounted, and it felt damned good. He had saved her, helped her.

  Phoenix broke the kiss. Covering her breast with his large hand, he squeezed gently. “Damn, you’re sexy, a beautiful siren.” He released her breast and drew his fingers down her belly.

  Her magic chased after his touch until her womb felt swollen and a deep ache rooted between her legs.

  “I want to see all of you, touch all of you.” His fingers slid to the top of her panties. “Even if I can’t get inside you the way I’m desperate to, we can—”

  Desperate. Inside her. Sex. Cold fear jump-started in her stomach. She hadn’t had sex since Kyle, had avoided sex. Sex and her feelings for him had set the whole handfast thing in motion. And Phoenix didn’t really want her, didn’t choose her; he was being compelled. He’d told her how much that pissed him off. He thought of her as some kind of burden. His words from last night filled her head: leashed to a blind witch who is handfasted to a demon.

  She grabbed his wrist. “Stop.” He didn’t want this, it was just lust for him. He wasn’t possessed, but he was like those men who had their will forced down and were controlled by a demon. They were soul mirrors, but he didn’t want that bond, didn’t want to have sex and complete the bond.

  The stain of loneliness spread in her. She was alone. That made her think of the cold darkness of nothingness she had felt as she’d been dying. Summerland was the place of rest for witch-souls between reincarnations or for the souls that had completed their journey and stayed in Summerland as Ancestors, the old souls who guided the witches. It was supposed to be a place of beauty and peace, not that cold nothing absence of existence she’d felt. A shudder ripped through her.

  “Ailish? What’s wrong?”

  His voice stirred up the ashes of her previous warm desire, but she resisted. “It’s not real.” Enough of this. She had to focus on getting the handfast off, on making the right choices, not the easy or lust-induced ones. And she had to stop her mother and the coven. She sat up and scrambled off Phoenix’s lap, used magic to seal the edges of her bra top, and pulled up her pants.

  He rose, his body so tight that she could practically hear his muscles popping. He stood toe-to-toe with her. “You’re denying your desire for me is real?”

  “You told me it’s the soul-mirror bond. Not your choice, remember?”

  He sucked in a breath. “I chose to save you, to give you my blood.”

  “But not your soul,” she said softly, the deep crux of that slamming her in her heart. Even her magic cringed at that rejection. But could she blame him, when even the Ancestors, those revered old soul earth witches, rejected her? No surprise that he didn’t trust her enough to bind his soul with hers.

  A frustrated breath spilled out of him. “Our souls will bind, Ailish. Forever. If you give in and become a demon witch, my soul will be gone.” He touched her arm. “I’ve fought since puberty to resist the curse and keep my soul.”

  She pulled her arm back. “Then we’re not having sex. I’m not having sex anyway. Sex is just a way for Asmodeus to control me.”

  “I’m not trying to control you,” he said.

  “You told me not to use my voice, not to sing to try and break the handfast.” Why was she debating this with him?

  He stepped back, his shadow shifting as though he were crossing his arms. “But you did sing again. Yanking me to you. So who is controlling who?”

  “I didn’t sing to call you, I was trying to save …” The memories slammed into her, and her chest tightened painfully. “Dee and Kyle! A rogue cut Dee’s throat, and they dragged me away from her when I was trying to heal her. She was dying! I sang to send my power to her. Kyle got her in the car, I think.” Her mind was jumping, the memories rushing at her. “I heard a car start up and drive away. They must have escaped. I need a phone. I think I left my phone in the car. I can call my number and see if they answer.” Her heart was pounding. They had to be okay.

  Phoenix moved, scooping something off the ground. “You left your phone in the car?”

  She wrapped her arms around her stomach in relief. “Yes. The number is—”

  “Don’t need it. I put a GPS tracking device in it yesterday.”

  She was just too tired, too overwhelmed, to be upset. “Can you see the location of the phone? Where it is?” It was a pain in the ass to be so dependent.

  “Your house. They must be waiting there to see if you show up.”

  So was Dee alive? She thought fast. “Call my phone. Kyle can’t be out in the open where the coven can get him.”

  “Coven of demon witches?” His voice went mean, his hatred of demon witches riding each word.

  Bouncing on her toes, she said, “Yes. They want Kyle to force me into the Claiming Rite. That’s why I went there. Here, just give me the phone!” She grabbed his arm and took the phone f
rom him and dialed. Three rings later, she got a “Hello.”

  “Dee!” Thank the Ancestors! “Are you and Kyle all right?”

  Dee answered, “I’m fine, just a red mark on my neck and a lot of dried blood. Kyle says you’re a witch.”

  “I am.” The woman deserved the truth. “But you two need to get someplace safe until I can reach you. I guess maybe a hotel or—”

  “They’ll come here,” Phoenix said, and gave her directions.

  Ailish repeated the directions, then hung up. “Thanks, that makes the most sense.” She held out his phone to him. “It’ll give me a few minutes to figure out where we should go. Dee’s a target now that—”

  She heard him move, then he put his hands on either side of her face. “Have to touch you. Bloodlust.”

  Her senses were pinging from his touch, but she realized what he meant. “Oh.”

  “And I want to touch you.” He brushed his thumbs over her cheekbones.

  The desire moved rich and thick through her, filling up her breasts, rolling down her belly, and swelling her between her legs. “Phoenix, don’t.”

  “This is more than a compulsion. I chose to save you, Ailish, chose to give you my blood. There’s something about you.” He touched the scars around her eyes. “Little starbursts surrounding the silvery blue of your eyes.”

  A shudder of soft, tempting pleasure washed through her. “They used to be a dark blue.” She had no idea what her eyes looked like now. But it had to be ugly.

  His breath feathered her face. “They are so light in color, almost silver. Very striking.”

  She stood there, his BlackBerry in her hand, letting him caress her face. Basking in the contact, in the way his touch and words seemed to fill empty places in her. He slid his fingers into her hair, sending more sensual feelings cascading down her back.

  “How did it happen, Ailish? How did you lose your sight?”

  The words flowed out of her. “Witch karma.”

  His hands froze in her hair. “Who did you hurt?”

  It was almost as if he’d pulled the plug on all those lovely sensations traveling her nerve endings. Lifting her chin, she said, “My mother.” Once she said that much, the rest tumbled out. “She’s the high witch of the Deus’Donovan coven.”