But what did she do with it? She swept the room with air, trying to see what Phoenix was doing. The gym was quiet, no sound. Ailish concentrated, closing her eyes and listening for any movement or noise …
Twin images appeared, and she gasped. It was like making love last night: Every time she’d orgasmed with him deep inside her, she’d seen the bird. But now she saw two halves of the bird, with nearly the width of a doorway between them. She was seeing the tattoos on his arms! She didn’t have to turn her head to see the bird; it was a connection between her and the phoenix that allowed her to track him anywhere in the gym. Long practice in the ring kept her game face in place while her mind whirled over strategies. She could see him, but how did she get him onto the ground?
She had to bring him to her. He’d told her to use magic, but part of her still shied away from losing control of her siren power.
But the bigger part of her wanted to win!
Tracking the birds, she saw Phoenix circling her, moving silently around the edges of the mat. She could feel the danger, feel the way he was coiling his muscles, ready to spring. Dangerous. Hot. Hers.
She shot out a fast kick.
He evaded her without any effort. “I’ll go watch a movie while you learn to fight.” He turned and walked to the stairs.
All she could see were the bird tats moving away from her. Her magic surged, trying to reach him. Her throat ached, and her competitive instinct burst free. She lifted both hands, focused everything she had on those twin tattoos, and sang, “The wings are mine! I claim them now!” The power rolled up in a huge wave, and she fought to control it.
Then she felt the wings sweeping fast and determined, corralling her magic into the path she chose.
Excited, thrilled, she struggled to stand still as her magic shot out.
“Holy shit,” he said, and before the words were out, he was in front of her. “Your voice caught me and pulled me right to you!”
She lifted her hands, magically wrapping the pants she’d taken off around his ankles.
“Hey!”
She put both hands on his chest and shoved. His massive shadow went over and she heard the thump when he fell. “I win!” She danced in a circle. Then paused. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
His shadow rose as he sat up and jerked the pants off his ankles. Then he snapped up to his full six-foot-four height of pure menace. “Impressive …” His voice rang with pride, then slid to challenge. “Come here, Ailish. Claim your prize. Unless you’re afraid when I’m not tied up?”
“Be good, or I will tie you up,” she taunted as she reached up and touched his biceps. The bird nuzzled his head in her palms. She dragged her palms over his shoulders, measuring the width of them. Then she traced down his chest, over his pectorals, and touched a nipple.
He jerked, and his nipple hardened. “I’ll be good, only because I’m going to need my hands free to touch you,” he said in his sex-growl voice.
She used her fingers to mark the path down his ribs, feeling the way he narrowed. So much strength. Even his bones felt brawny. Then his tapered-in waist. She stepped closer, until she felt his erection brushing her T-shirt. Her entire body was focused in her hands, in the sensation of Phoenix as she outlined his back. His strength was tightly packed into sensual muscle. No wonder he could heft her hundred and thirty pounds so effortlessly.
Her greedy magic poured through her fingers as she found that dip in his back just above his butt. There was no stopping. She leaned closer and pressed her mouth to his chest, brushed her lips over the hot skin as she filled her palms with his round butt cheeks.
“Your magic,” he panted. “Everywhere.”
She licked up and caught his nipple.
He palmed the back of her head. “Kiss me.”
Lifting her head, she met his fiercely hungry, open-mouthed kiss. She rubbed up against him, feeling his erection slide up her stomach while she shaped and squeezed his backside.
He reached around, caught her wrists to pull her hands off his butt, and brought them to his stomach.
He growled into her mouth, pushing her hands down, the sparse hair on his lower stomach grazing her palms. Then the hair grew thicker, more wiry, until he wrapped both her hands around his dick.
Her heart leaped and hammered. Her magic reached through her stroking, tasting, drawing him to her. Everything swelled and ached as he filled her hands. Big, hot, stretched skin over a hard shaft. She circled the swollen head, brushed the slit, and he shuddered.
Mine … He filled her head with the statement. He broke the kiss, stripped off her shirt. Knelt down, tugged at her panties. The yawning, deep need broke free in her. Wild magic swayed and pulsed. She couldn’t catch it, couldn’t control it.
Phoenix swept an arm under her legs. Catch you.
Didn’t even think. Trust. Fell into his arms.
He caught her, laid her on the mat, covered her with his massive body. Shimmering magic popped and raced between them. She could feel it lighting up all over her, more alluring than the flickering TV lights. It touched her skin and filled her dark world. “Phoenix …”
“Open for me, beauty.”
She could feel his gaze on her face as she lay beneath him, and she wrapped her legs around him.
Phoenix drove home inside her. One long, deep stroke that caused all her magic to sigh. Then he began to thrust. Harder, faster.
She reached out and held on to the bird, opening her body, her chakras, her mind, taking what Phoenix gave her. Each thrust drove her higher.
“Ailish, you’re inside me. Look, baby. See what I see!” he said in a voice filled with more than sex.
She opened her eyes, trying to see him.
But instead her vision filled with herself. A woman with a swollen mouth, strong face, scars, and incredibly silver eyes. And as she came apart for him, as the pleasure shattered her, she saw her witch-shimmer light up to a fierce, golden-bronzed glow.
My God, she was seeing herself as Phoenix saw her.
“My beauty,” Phoenix roared as he came inside of her.
Ailish was so deep in his mind, another massive shudder of pleasure ripped through him. Her magic had him by the balls. It circled and caressed and squeezed. It milked his cock deep inside her, while her essence, her very presence, was in his mind, joined so perfectly that she could see with him.
That sent him over the edge, and he exploded inside her, spurting deep into her magic. The moment strung out, the two of them immersed in soul-deep pleasure.
Settling against her, feeling her body beneath his, smelling the commingled scent, feeling the very beat of her heart behind her breasts, he knew: She was ripping open his heart and making him too damned vulnerable.
And there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.
He stroked her hair and laid his face next to hers, cheek-to-cheek. She needed touch, this witch of his. She was a heart-wrenching combination of tough and vulnerable. She’d suffered and survived, making herself stronger and able to defend herself.
He knew what drew him to her. Beyond the magic and souls and games of the gods and demons, he knew what it was. Ailish wouldn’t break.
It was up to him to make sure she didn’t die.
Ailish drew him away from his thoughts as she said, “I haven’t seen what I look like in almost eight years.”
He smiled, so damned proud that he’d been able to show her. And her magic, Jesus, her power was huge. Too much for one small witch. But with his phoenix, she could control it. It was humbling.
He pulled away from her body, rolled to his side, and scooped her into his arms. “Told you, you’re my beauty.”
She put her hand on his chest. “I look different. Face is more angular, hard, I guess.”
He leaned her back and traced her face. Touching the scars, her cheekbone, her jaw. “Not hard, strong. You were just a child when you lost your sight. The baby softness gave way to a woman’s strength.”
“Thank you for showing me.” For
giving me this new definition of myself.
He heard that mind whisper, but he didn’t think she’d projected that to him. That meant she was starting to trust him on an unconscious level that made his chest swell. Noticing that her body was cooling, he threw a leg over her hips to warm her with his. “Your power is growing, and so is your control. I can’t believe how you all but forced me to you.”
She tensed. “Will it work tonight without you next to me? What if we can’t control my siren magic that way and accidentally enhance demon magic?”
“Even Wing Slayer said you’ll have full control once mated, Ailish.” He kissed her again, trying to ease her worry, then added, “It’s just an experiment. Axel, Sutton, and I want to see how much resistance we have against the wards, the witches want to try their spell, and we’ll see how much your voice can enhance their magic.”
Phoenix looked down at her left wrist, at the hated handfast binding. If tonight didn’t work, he’d find another way to get her free of that demon.
Phoenix drove a black four-wheel-drive Xterra up the old road to Screaming Chapel. The whole area had been abandoned after the massacre more than seven decades ago. As soon as he got within half a mile of the chapel, he began to feel uneasy.
“See anything, Axel?” he said into his earpiece.
“Soon as I get near enough overhead, I hear screams and smell something bad. Too close, and it makes me dizzy. Don’t really want to fall thirty feet to the ground.”
Sutton said, “Ailish was right, there’s some kind of hallucinogenic effect going on. When I get close enough, I remember the time Carly died in my arms.”
Phoenix said, “I saw my dead mother when we were at the house. The drug has to be woven with dark magic to go after our worst memory, or …”
The SUV sputtered, lurched, then stopped dead. Even the lights went out. The scent of sulfur drifted around him. “Shit, they know we’re here. Demon magic killed the electrical system in the car. Even the lights are gone.”
He sat in the vehicle and searched the area. It took only a few seconds for his vision to adjust to the moonlit night. He didn’t see anyone skulking around on the road. “Either they have some force field to drain the car battery, or they have cameras watching the area, or spies, and used magic to cut the power.”
Sutton said, “I don’t see anyone around your vehicle. Get out and meet us a quarter mile ahead. That will put us close enough to let the witches try their spell.”
Phoenix stayed alert, grabbed a flashlight and the keys, then got out. “Maybe the witches can help me restart the SUV when we leave. Not hoofing it all the way back.”
“We could drop you someplace,” Axel said dryly.
“I’d rather walk.” He hated flying in airplanes, something all the hunters knew and teased him about. Men with wings carrying him? Not a chance. His own memory of flying had ended in flames. Phoenix went as far as he could before the wards made his ears ring, a feeling of pressure built in his chest, and his unease made him sweat.
The other two hunters landed in front of him. They were close enough now to see the glow of torches and shadows moving. “At least some of them are here,” Phoenix said in a whisper. He checked his weapons, two knives, a gun, and his chain. Just in case they could break the wards and get in there.
Axel looked grim. “Time’s running out for them. They must be doing everything they can to get Ailish to turn, especially now that they can no longer harness her siren power to enhance their magic.”
He looked around again, seeing the dim shape of the chapel and feeling a strong sense of déjà vu. He’d never come up here as a kid; in fact, it always made him uneasy even to talk about it. “I think this is where Ailish was born, and where I died in the phoenix form.”
Axel had his phone in his hand, but he jerked his gaze up. “You remember it?”
He shuddered. “Makes me think of burning. The memory is more real now than any time before.” He could almost smell the scorched feathers. He hated the idea of Ailish being born out here, surrounded by viper witches and valued only for her worth in trade to a demon.
Axel nodded, then said to both of them, “Be ready. Phoenix, you’re not immortal, remember that.”
He wasn’t going to let her mother kill him. Axel quickly talked to Darcy, then held up the phone while the witches directed their spell.
Even from the miles separating them, Phoenix felt Ailish’s magic bloom in his guts. He could feel the bird lift his wings and help her. It was surreal, powerful, and made him so damned proud.
Ailish sat on the floor in a circle with the two other witches in Darcy’s condo.
“I’m placing a white candle in a black bowl, sprinkling it with dirt of the earth …” Darcy paused in her explanations, then said, “And pouring in water to the top.” The sound of water splashing into a bowl filled the room.
Carla was on Ailish’s left. “We use white candles to break through dark magic and replace it with the magic of the earth.”
Ailish’s chakras already bubbled in excitement. She was going to do spell magic with earth witches. For eight years, this was what she’d wanted, to be a real earth witch.
“Okay,” Darcy said. “We can’t use a salt circle, so we’re going to keep this simple, using only our first five chakras. The communication with other realms will help us push our power through the phone that Carla and I are holding between us. Let’s join hands and form the circle.”
Ailish’s hands felt heavy in her lap. All those years she’d kept people from touching her. But they just reached out and took her hands as if it were normal. Natural. Ailish relaxed a little.
“Carla and I will begin the chant and light the flame. You’ll feel our power circling through you. When that happens, add your voice power. If anyone feels a dark threat of any kind, break the circle by dropping hands. Got it?”
“Yes,” Ailish said.
They began to chant:
Earth, air, water, and flames,
Circle and grow into
An army of light to
Bring down darkness!
Ailish felt the other witches’ power begin to move through her. Her chakras made her a natural conduit; now it was time to use her voice power. As they chanted, she began to sing:
Bury it with earth;
Scatter it with air;
Drown it with water;
Burn it with fire!
Ailish heard the flame on the candle surge. She kept her power flowing, absolutely thrilled at the bright magic churning in her, joining with the other two witches. It felt strong and good. She pushed more and more magic through her voice, which went through the circle. Her skin warmed, her nipples hurt, even her womb ached as her magic thrummed up from her very core. She began to feel the power drenching her, growing too thick, too much … and then the bird cooed softly, and she felt his wings sweeping the power, keeping it focused.
It was freeing and powerful … and she went with it, singing and singing, letting it build and build. Her joy in being a real earth witch and circling her powers with other witches, being part of something good, made her heart swell. Suddenly, she heard the bird screech. Terrible pressure filled her head and shoved between her eyes. Ailish snatched her hands away from Carla and Darcy just as she felt something break open on her forehead, and her spirit yanked out through the hole.
She tumbled down, like falling down a mine shaft, falling and falling, and she couldn’t touch or see or feel anything. Then the scent of sulfur and incense slowed her descent. She saw shadows and flickering lights surrounded by fog, and then it began to clear.
A tall nude woman, hair cascading over her shoulders, stood at a stone altar.
Recognition exploded—she was seeing her mother! At the coven grounds. She couldn’t turn and look, but she sensed the rest of the coven witches spread out behind Maeve.
What was happening?
Black candles flickered on the altar, surrounding a gray rectangular box, like a small document safe, b
ut the top had a jagged hole. Her mother clutched a black knife in her hand and looked up, her blue eyes zeroing in on Ailish. “You provided the blood link. Now I can kill the mother and baby.”
Cold dread dripped down her spine. Morgan! Her blood got on Morgan when Maeve caused Ailish’s scars to burn open. Hot rage and nausea choked her, but she could do nothing, only stare as her mother moved the knife to her flat stomach and sliced. Blood welled up in a shallow cut.
Then she cut again. And again. All the while whispering, “Morgan, I’ve come to kill your baby. Cut off his toes. His feet. His fingers …”
“So be it!” the other witches chanted.
Her mother held up the knife dripping with blood and returned her gaze to Ailish. “Submit or they die. If you still refuse, I’ll kill the phoenix.”
No! Ailish felt sick panic grip her.
Maeve said, “I saw him burn, knew you were a siren. We couldn’t let you ever find out and call your familiar, so we gathered up his ashes and locked them in this safe.”
Ailish’s vision moved to the gray box with the hole in the top. The phoenix had risen, she realized, blowing out of the hole. But what did it all mean?
Her vision went back to her mother. “We used a bit of the ash to track him, but his witch hunter blood made him immune to our demon magic. Instead we found his mother. Pity she didn’t kill him, although we told her to over and over. But now that your soul is bound with his, we can get to him through you.”
Ailish’s voice broke free and she screamed, “No! No!” The vision spun away as she was propelled back. Her head felt like there was a spike between her eyes, she was shaking, and nausea made her mouth water.
“Ailish, answer me!” Darcy yelled.
“Darcy!” Joe yelled, running in. “It’s Morgan! She’s bleeding!”
Phoenix felt the pressure on his chest ease, the ringing and screams in his ears begin to fade. Damn, the witches were doing it. He palmed his knife and wrapped his chain around his hand, ready to spring through once the wards were down enough and Axel gave the command.
Night Magic: A Wing Slayer Novel Page 25
