Night Magic: A Wing Slayer Novel

by Jennifer Lyon

  He was so close to success. Kill Ailish’s mother and free her from the handfast! He’d have Ailish, his soul mirror, to care for and protect, to help her with her magic.

  The bird screeched, then went into a frenzy, clawing, pecking, the flames blistering his skin. “What?” he whispered to it. Something was wrong! Ailish’s power shifted and scattered, as though she and the bird had lost control.

  Darcy’s voice came through the phone Axel held. “Ailish broke the circle and she’s not answering us. She won’t let me touch her to try to pull her out. Axel, she’s in trouble.”

  Rage roared through him as Axel said, “We’re coming back now. Be careful.”

  “Wait, Axel!” Darcy yelled. “It’s Morgan. She’s bleeding from cuts all over her stomach. It’s demon magic. Hurry, I need your help!”

  Axel’s green eyes turned deadly, and his wings sprang from his back. “I’m coming now. So is Sutton.”

  Sutton’s wings burst out, and the two of them took off.

  Phoenix spun around and ran for the SUV at the speed of a panther. He got to the vehicle, jumped in, jammed the keys into the ignition, and turned.

  Nothing. Dead.

  Urgency ripped up his spine, the bone-crunching need to get to Ailish. He shoved out of the vehicle and broke into a run down the road. His boots churned up dust as he leaped over potholes and rocks.

  Not fast enough! Ailish was in trouble! What happened? Was the demon hurting her? He had to get there. He pushed harder, his heart pumping, his muscles straining, his chest and back burning.

  He could feel Ailish’s distress, her emotional turmoil, her sweaty cold fear and regret.

  A sudden flash of heat, and a weight burst from his back in a loud whoosh.

  He stumbled but fought to stay on his feet and keep running. Faster, harder … as his muscles burned. He leaped over another rock and—

  “Oh, hell.” He was rising off the ground. Phoenix looked to the right. Blue-and-purple feathers shimmered in the moonlight over a powerful wing that stretched out five or six feet.

  He jerked his head left and saw the same thing.

  Wings. Flying. Just like before, almost twenty-four years ago when Ailish had been born. His muscles knew what to do, how to pump the wings and take him into the air.

  He hoped he didn’t burn up this time, but his need to get to Ailish overrode that. He soared high over the skies of Glassbreakers, into the industrial area, and down into the back of the club. He used his palm print to open the garage, ran to the elevator, opened it, and got halfway in when he realized he had a problem.

  His wings wouldn’t fit.

  He’d seen Axel and Sutton do this. They just sort of shrugged, and the wings lifted and then folded and disappeared back into the tattoos. He glanced down at one of his biceps; the tat was gone. Then he lifted his shoulders. “Fold up.”

  The wings ruffled, as if they were hurrying him. He snapped, “I get can’t upstairs to Ailish with the wings out!”

  The wings lifted, curled, and vanished.

  He hurried into the elevator and pushed the button. As the doors closed, he check his biceps. The tattoo of the phoenix rising from the flames was there. Same with the other arm. The bird looked impatient, but it was there.

  The doors opened and Phoenix ran into Axel’s condo. Morgan lay on the couch. Darcy and Carla leaned over her, while Axel and Sutton both touched their witches to help funnel their magic. Joe hovered. “Where’s Ailish?” he asked.

  Axel looked at him. “How did you … Wings?”

  “Yes. Where is she?” He looked around and didn’t see her. Fear and worry erupted inside him. Good Christ, she hadn’t left, maybe run away or—

  “In your condo.”

  Slightly relieved, he asked, “How’s Morgan?” He looked between Carla’s and Darcy’s hands to see shallow cuts all over Morgan’s swollen stomach. The dark magic had opened the healed scars from when Eric had cut her. Then he caught sight of the two witches’ hands. Thick dark lines were crawling up their fingers and over the backs of their hands before fading away. They were pulling out the demon magic, and both their witch-shimmers had pain holes in them. Sutton and Axel were siphoning off the pain, but it was not enough.

  “What the hell happened?”

  Axel answered, “Ailish said that when her mother tore open her scars, her blood got on Morgan, establishing a blood link.”

  He reasoned it out. “Maeve has a blood link to Ailish through their mother-daughter relationship.”

  “And Maeve deepened the link with her daughter by adding her blood to the handfast contract,” Axel reminded him.

  He ground his jaw. “Ailish’s blood got on Morgan, linking her mother.” That shit didn’t work with witch hunters, which was why Axel hadn’t been worried when he’d picked Ailish up. “Trying to force Ailish to finish the handfast by hurting Morgan and her baby. Just like that bitch tried to kill Haley.” It made his head ring with rage.

  Carla lifted her head, and Sutton pulled her long blond hair out of her way so she could look at Phoenix. “Go see her, Phoenix. She was upset, her witch-shimmer a sick color. She wouldn’t let us touch her. This wasn’t her fault. She was helping, trying so hard.” Carla shuddered, either from pain or frustration. “Go see her. Take care of her.”

  Phoenix looked at Joe, crouched down by Morgan’s head, his back bunched with rage-filled muscles as he gently stroked Morgan’s sweaty face.

  There was nothing he could do here, so he pulled the door closed and strode down to his condo. Opening the door, he spotted Ailish sitting in the corner of the leather couch, the room dark except for the flashing lights of the TV. No sound. It tore at his chest to see her sitting there, arms wrapped around her bent knees, staring. She looked so alone.

  He shut the door.

  She didn’t move. Just sat there, eyes wide and fixed on the TV that she couldn’t see. “Why don’t you have the sound on?” He sank next to her on the couch.

  “I like the lights. They move over my skin and change the shadows. It doesn’t feel so dark.”

  A sharp pain hit his chest. “Ailish, it wasn’t your fault.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She was stiff, and he didn’t feel any of her magic.

  She lifted her head from her knees and turned to look at him. “I infected Morgan and her baby with demon magic. I saw my mother tonight. She told me she’ll kill Morgan and the baby, kill you, kill everyone until I submit.”

  He could feel her desolation. “She can’t kill me, can’t get to the rest of us. She had to go after the mortal.” He slid his hand beneath her hair to her nape. “We’ll work together.…”

  She let go of her legs and with her stealthy grace stood up and walked to where the TV was mounted on the wall. Tilting her head back so the lights bathed her face, she said, “We can’t. I have to kill my mother to break her link to Morgan. Alone.”

  Protective adrenaline surged through him, driving him to his feet. “You’re not alone.”

  She turned, facing him. “Maybe the handfast will break before the witch karma kills me. Maybe that will be enough for the Ancestors.”

  He sucked in air, trying to get control of the absolute furious need to protect her, keep her safe, keep her with him. Her fear of the darkness, of spending eternity in cold nothingness, was so acute, he experienced her dread filling his stomach. She was standing in the lights of the TV, trying to absorb them, trying to chase out the cold darkness she so feared. “I’m not going to let you die.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  He closed the distance between them, wrapped his arms around her, feeling all her muscles packed into her tight frame, and tried to fill her with his warmth. She stood motionless, arms at her side. She was slipping away, and he tried to pull her back. “We’re going to do this together. You’ll get strong enough to magically fight your mother off, and use your magic to break down the wards. I’ll kill her.” He pressed his face into her hair.

  “She has your ashes.” Her vo
ice was hopeless.

  A strange echo pinged in his head and through his body. Slowly, he let her go and took a step back. “What ashes?”

  “The ashes of the phoenix that burned at my birth. My mother gathered them, and used them to try to kill you.”

  His gut tightened, and he watched the TV lights play off her face and silvery eyes. “I’m immune to magic like that. All witch hunters are. Wing Slayer made us that way, leaving only our mortal relatives vulnerable. Before the curse, the earth witches would protect or heal them if—” It slammed home so hard that it knocked him back another step. “My mother.”

  “They tried to make her kill you. They still have the ashes and will use our soul bond to find a way to destroy you.”

  Murderous anger exploded behind his eyes, filling his vision with a red fog. In his head he saw the image of his mother, her body nearly empty of blood, cold and pitiful in that alley behind the Dumpster. The broken beer bottle in her lax hand, caked with her dried blood. She’d cut and cut, her wrists, her neck, even her thigh … to stop the voices.

  It hadn’t been his father’s fault for getting her pregnant and dying. Not her family’s fault for abandoning her when she was pregnant.

  No, it had been his fault. For being a familiar to a siren witch, flying and burning, letting the vipers get his ashes. For being this creature … and yet his mother had loved him and never once hurt him. Ever. Instead she’d gone deeper and deeper into herself, tried to hurt herself.

  Eventually she’d killed herself.

  Suffocating with the guilt, rage, the memories, he stormed out. Away.

  Phoenix knew Key was there, standing silently behind him. The other hunter had shown up about ten minutes ago. But right now, his head was filled with his mother. He stared at the headstone. It said only her name, Sheri Torq. He wasn’t a poet; he hadn’t known how to capture his mother’s life in a single phrase.

  His head pounded. The anger drained off, and it began to make more sense. He remembered bits and pieces of their life before the voices. She’d held down a job as a nurse. The days she was off, they’d get up, have breakfast, do chores, then go to the park or library, read together, watch videos. It had all changed so fast.

  Around the time he’d begun having the dream of flying across the sky, hearing the baby cry, and burning. He’d been four, and his mother had been twenty-six. It fit.

  Sheri had thought she had schizophrenia. She’d taught Phoenix that word in one of her better times, even explained that she’d read somewhere the average age of onset was twenty-five for women. She had tried medications, but they’d always failed.

  Finally, he said, “I thought she was weak, that she’d been broken by my father. Turns out she was stronger than most. She never tried to hurt me.”

  Moving up to stand next to Phoenix, Key said, “Ailish tracked me down on the cell phone and told me what happened.”

  Ailish. Christ, the way he’d hauled ass out of there, what did she think? What if she left? He turned to Key. “Where is she?”

  “In the condo. She wanted to leave, but I convinced her to stay, told her that her mother is trying to drive her to the streets where they can get her. Sutton has a camera watching the door, she won’t get out without someone knowing.”

  Relieved that she was safe, he rubbed his forehead and looked down at his mom’s grave.

  “Sheri saved me,” Key said. “Stopped me from becoming a murdering animal like the rest of my family. Especially after …”

  “Yeah.” Phoenix knew. His mother had loved Key. “Remember that time she caught you drawing pictures of naked women and selling them to the boys?”

  Key snorted. “She asked me how I’d feel about those boys looking at naked pictures of her. Or Haley. Made me feel like a real shit.”

  “You were a shit. Still are.”

  “I’m not the one who stole the communion wine from the church,” Key pointed out.

  A smile cracked his face. Sheri had marched his butt to the church and made him confess. He could still feel the burn of that humiliation. She’d told him stealing food to survive was one thing, but stealing the symbolic blood of Christ? Not cool. “Funny how she never asked where the Hershey’s Kisses we stole for her came from.”

  Key laughed. “Or the books. She loved to read.”

  “Still miss her,” he said, unable to admit that to anyone else. “I wanted to give her the life she never had.”

  Key turned his gray eyes on him. “She wanted to give you a chance at life. She succeeded. Don’t take that away from her, Phoenix. She succeeded. She fought the demon witches the only way she could. Sheri won, and she can rest now.”

  It still hurt to have failed her, to have caused her so much pain. But Key was right: She’d loved him and fought for him. He would honor that. “Now it’s my turn to fight them.”

  Could he be as strong as his mother and free Ailish?

  Ailish knew it was a dream because she could see. She was little, maybe six years old. Wearing her pink nightgown with the puffy little cap sleeves and white flowers with yellow centers and green leaves growing out of the stems.

  It was deep night and the house blazed with lights. But the light by her bed had gone out.

  Her room was filled with shadows. Thick shadows that moved with creepy clicks and pops, as though the pieces didn’t fit right. Hellhounds. Assembled from dead animals, the parts never fit right.

  They were charged with protecting her and keeping her in the house. The malice in them made her spine cringe. At the time, she hadn’t understood chakras or earth magic. But every cell in her body knew the hellhounds were wrong. Evil. Unnatural.

  They’d rip her apart if they weren’t under orders from her mother to keep her unharmed.

  They were in her room. Skulking in the shadows, sensing her. Ailish didn’t know if they saw or smelled or what. Some had eyes, some didn’t.…

  She’d woken terrified. Her heart pounding in her chest, her skin itchy with cold sweat, her stomach roiling.

  She had to get to the light. The hallway light was on. It flooded the doorway to her room. The hellhounds didn’t like the light. She had to make herself push back the blanket and run for that bright glow.

  Click. Pop. Skuttle.

  A sob worked up her throat. She wished her mother were home! Oh God.

  Pop.

  It was closer. She tried to peer into the darkness of her room. She could see her dresser, was that something next to it?

  Click, click.

  “Stay back!” she shouted, her voice floating into the darkness. Her nose clogged with unshed tears. Her throat ached. Her fingers hurt where she clutched the blanket.

  Pop, skuttle.

  She hated not knowing what was in the dark! Hated the dark! Hated being so scared. She jerked back the covers and scooted to the edge of the bed. Put her feet on the floor.

  Something touched her ankle.

  Ailish screamed so hard, her throat burned. She shoved off the bed and ran.…

  “Ailish, wake up.”

  She tried to listen to the voice, but all she could hear were the scuttles, pops, and clicks. The terror pounded through her. She needed a light, needed—

  “Sweetheart, what is that? You’re showing me something.”

  She startled awake, cradled in Phoenix’s lap, his arms around her, his scent and warmth chasing away the nightmare. Her magic was flowing through her, reaching for him.

  “Is that your nightmare I’m seeing?”

  She couldn’t stop it! She was projecting her terror to him through their mind link, she guessed. “Sorry, umm, hellhounds. I was dreaming and—”

  “That’s you,” he said softly. “The little girl.” He spread his hand out on her back and rubbed gently. Her residual terror began to melt away, and her heart started to calm down. His scent, the leather, soap, and musk, sank through her skin to her blood. Ailish knew she was acting like a one-woman freak show. She closed her eyes to get control and gasped. I see something
. It was a room. There was very little light, yet she could see perfectly. There was the door, the dresser, the wood floor. She could see into dark corners! No hellhounds!

  He slid his hand beneath her shirt to the skin on her back. Keep your eyes closed and look with me. See? No hellhounds. It was just a nightmare.

  She felt him shift, turning his body slightly. She saw the room across from the bed. The long, light green wall with the TV mounted on it. At the right edge of the wall was a doorway. She knew that led to the bathroom and closet.

  Phoenix stood up while holding her and turned. Now she saw the bed with the rumpled covers. The comforter had big squares of brown and green. The sheets were green. She could see the other side of the room. How?

  Your magic. It reached out and pulled me in even while you slept. I could see your nightmare. See you as a little girl, afraid of the dark and the hellhounds. Could see the terror and tears in your huge blue eyes. His hand on her back stiffened.

  She could feel his fury. For her. He cared enough about her to bring light to her shadows. Her throat ached, but she swallowed it down as the memories of everything else came back. Seeing her mother with her third eye, learning what she’d done with Phoenix’s ashes, and Maeve hurting Morgan. “What are you doing here?” She thought he’d go back to his house.

  “I’m here for you.” He put his hand on her face. “Ailish, I was shocked, upset, but I don’t blame you for your mother.”

  Her throat tightened. Didn’t he get it? She had to make him understand. Pushing against his chest, she dropped her legs to the ground and stood. Stepping back, she felt the chill of the room without his warmth. “I infected Morgan. My mother will use our soul-mirror bond to infect you. I’m the disease, don’t you see? This is why I’ve always stayed away from people. I have to do this alone.” She thought he understood that. He had walked out, leaving her alone. Why the hell had he come back?

  He stepped forward.

  She moved back, desperately fighting to keep the shredded bits of her defenses in place. “I only wanted to be an earth witch. When I helped Darcy and Carla heal Morgan, I thought I was. And then tonight, I thought I was helping earth witches fight demon witches.”