“… the threads … the door opens wider … Yessss.”
Shit, was using magick making it worse? Skidding round the bend in the corridor, I dropped the skein, running full sprint for the library.
Please let Vritra have revived the High Witch. Pushing into the room I slammed the doors shut, except there was no lock on this door.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I backed up.
Vritra where the fuck are you? The High Witch had mojo. She’d be able to get past the possessed witches, right? If not, then this plan sucked.
The doors slammed open and the hungry horde hovered in. Their mouths were smiling now, crazy crimson smiles of death.
“Stay back.” I held out my hand. The cuff winked at me as if to say, doh, emergency dumbass.
Paimon! How did this work, did I speak into it. Did I just think it? What?
The horde surged toward me, and I threw up both arms in defense. Paimon!
But it was too late. They were on me, talons tearing at my flesh, rancid breath and pretty silk brushing against me. Hungry possessed witches wrapped in ball gowns tearing at my dress, desperate to get to the soft flesh beneath. My skin burned like fire where they raked it.
Panic squeezed my chest and I was no longer in the library. I was back underground, in the shadows beneath the dark mass of the monsters as they took me apart. No, not again. Not this time. I fought back, pulling from the skein, not caring about the damage, channeling the power into talons of my own to rip and shred in turn. I wasn’t going down without a fight, not this time.
An icy breeze ripped through the room, stealing the breath from my lungs and leaving icicles in its wake. The witches froze in their task, heads coming up to assess this new development.
“Carmella?”
I was buried beneath them, but there was a gap, large enough to push my hand through.
“Carmella!”
The witches went flying off me, slamming into walls and bookcases.
Paimon pulled me up, tucking me under his arm, his huge frame vibrating with anger.
“What are these abominations?”
“Witches. They’re possessed. We can’t kill them. We have to send the demons back.”
The witches recovered quickly and barreled toward us again. Paimon flicked his wrist and an icy wind kicked up, pushing them back.
“What is this place?”
“The Mayfair Coven mansion. There was a ball, and I joined in the chant and accidentally opened a doorway. This is what came through.” Vritra wasn’t back, which meant something had gone wrong downstairs. “I need to get to the High Witch. She’s the only one that can help me close the door and banish them.”
The witches screamed. They veered away and out the door.
Fuck, they’d heard my plan. They knew I needed the High Witch.
“They’re going for her! I’m not going to be able to get there on time.”
Paimon wrapped his arms around me, pressing me to his solid chest. His heartbeat kicked up a notch.
“Hold on.”
And then we were dropping right through the fucking floor, just slipping through as if we weren’t corporeal. Which … wait a second, we weren’t. No time to ask him how he was doing this as the yells and screams of the trapped guests battered my ears.
We landed in the center of a circle of newly possessed witches, Shukra was waving his arms in the air and chanting in some strange eastern language—Hindi probably, considering he was a Hindu sage. The witches who hadn’t been killed or possessed huddled behind him, quaking and trembling. Vritra was cradling the bleeding, but conscious, High Witch. The witches that had chased me came flying into the room and hovered above their demon allies.
Shukra’s chant seemed to be keeping them at bay. The witches huddled inside the circle squealed at the site of Paimon, huge and blue and fierce.
I held up my hands. “It’s all right. He’s a friend.”
Vritra stared at Paimon, questions in his eyes, but there was no time.
I crouched by the High Witch. “You have to help me. I can send them back, but I need your help.”
She blinked rapidly, the gaze sharpening. “Yes.” She pushed herself up. “We can banish them, but you must close the door.”
“How do I do that?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. But you will feel it. Trust your instincts.”
My instincts sucked when it came to magick, this whole world was new to me. But procrastinating wasn’t gonna get the demons gone.
“Okay, let’s do this.”
Vritra and I helped her up. She stood tall, her back straight, eyes blazing in the gloom. The other witches, seeing their leader back on her feet, seemed to calm down.
Shukra never faltered in his eastern chant, his voice a low reverberation. The possessed witches wailed and tore at their clothes as if the words were barbs attacking their skin. Paimon stepped forward, raising his hands to create an icy mist. It attacked the witches, seeping into their clothes and driving them further back.
“Link hands. All of you,” the High Witch ordered.
The witches smoothed their gowns and began to organize themselves. But when it came to taking my hand they shied away, disgust and fear written all over their terrified faces.
Oh great, to be shunned. “Look, if someone doesn’t fucking hold my hand we can’t fix this mess.”
“The mess you made,” someone spat.
Penelope. Why wasn’t I surprised? “You can get it all off your chest later. Right now we have demons to dispatch.”
“Daayans,” the High Witch said. “If we are to banish them you must know their true name. They are called Daayans.”
Never heard of them, but that wasn’t surprising considering they came from another reality. The fact the multi-verse was real had only become common knowledge five years ago, and some people still refused to believe it. This kind of shit made it impossible not to.
Drake stepped forward from the group of male witches standing at the edge of the circle. “I’ll do it. I’ll finish the circle.”
The High Witch shook her head. “It must be a female.”
Penelope gave him a smug look.
“For fucksake woman, complete the damn circle!” he snapped.
Pen flinched as if she’d been slapped. About time he had a go at her. She was entitled and spoiled and a hoity-toity brat. But she did grab my hand and complete the circle.
“Repeat after me and then repeat with me.” The High Witch began to chant. “Fractum expellit tenebras lucem et de animabus.”
My brain was quicker to translate this time. Out of the light and into the dark, return the broken souls. We said the words after her, and then with her, our voices rising as one.
The High Witch’s voice swelled in my mind even as her physical voice continued to chant. It was a collective message to the sisters. Feel the power, feel it and will it. Use the skein to bind and expel.
This level of incantation was about will and intention. How had I opened the door without intent? My stomach fluttered. No. Focus on the task at hand. Expel the Daayans. Heat built behind my diaphragm, radiating out until my torso was pulsing with energy.
Yes … that’s it.
The space in our circle began to shimmer and golden threads appeared in the air, twisting and writhing … alive—the threads to bind the Daayans.
The possessed screamed and turned to flee, but Paimon acted fast, erecting a wall of ice behind them. They were trapped between the chant and the ice.
Predator turned prey. Lasso and evict. The tendrils shot toward the possessed witches, slamming into their abdomens. A collective scream assaulted my ears. Man those Daayans were loud. It was time to hook and tug. The golden threads retracted, pulling a gray swirling mist from the witches’ bodies. The bodies immediately dropped to the ground. Some hit the floor with a soft thud, and others fell across the corpses of their fallen sisters.
We had the essence of the Daayans. The heat of triump
h joined the warmth in my torso.
Expel them now.
They didn’t belong here. The threads would send them home. We just needed to find the doorway. The darkness between us yawned, and then threads dove into the maw, taking the Daayans with them.
Now. Close it now. The High Witch’s voice was a booming command in my head.
What to do? How to close it … close damn you! The heat spread up to my neck, searing and painful. A scream erupted from my throat and then the maw winked out.
Penelope released me as if scalded, but the High Witch kept hold of my hand. She kept me on my feet as I swayed, ready to fall. I was wiped.
“It was her.”
“She did this.”
“Oh, god, oh god …”
Sobs and wails and curses.
“She needs to pay!”
“Time to go now,” Paimon whispered in my ear, and then his strong arms wrapped around me and swept me away.
_____
We were back at my flat. Back home where it was sane and no one was trying to kill me. Urvashi was fast asleep, snoring softly on my bed.
“Why did you do that? Why did you pull me out of there?”
“Too much anger, too much blame directed at you. Best to give it some distance.” He led me into the bathroom and shut the door. “You are wounded. Can you heal yourself?”
I shook my head. “I can’t risk using the skein after what I did.”
He lifted my arm, a mass of torn bloody flesh. It should hurt. Why wasn’t it hurting?
“I have taken the pain. I can heal you now if you wish?”
I nodded. Bone weary. “Please.”
He turned me around and pulled me against him, my back to his chest. Resting his chin on my head he exhaled slow and long. I floated on that breath, cradled against him, my skin tingling as it knit itself together. And then it was done.
He sighed against me. “You say you opened a doorway unintentionally?”
I nodded. “Looks like my powers were bound for a reason, I mean, if this is the shit that happens when I use them. Before tonight I wanted to throttle that person and now … I just wish I’d never unlocked my power.”
He cupped my shoulders, turned me around, and pulled me against him again, smoothing my hair. “It will be all right Carmella. What happened was a mistake. You were not to know. No one could have known.”
“But all the dead … so many dead witches …” the tears burning behind my eyelids seeped out and sobs shook me.
All I’d wanted for as long as I could remember was to be accepted. To be a true witch blood. First the covens had closed their doors on me, and then just as I’d found my feet as the artifacts librarian the assassin’s guild had shut down. I’d failed at being an IEPEU agent, and just about managed to become a good baker. Then Paimon had come along and I’d finally felt like I was making a difference by helping the djinn, and like a prayer my powers had been revealed. I was whole but once again fate decided it was too good for me. I was a witch with magick who couldn’t use it without opening a doorway to some alternate reality of hell. My life was like a rollercoaster with way too many downward curves. And tonight I had blood on my hands—the blood of innocent witches.
Paimon’s lips skimmed the top of my head. “I hate that you are in pain. I hate I cannot sooth it. But you must remember none of this is your fault. You were not to know what your power would do.”
This was good. Just being held like this, inhaling the exotic fragrance of his skin and listening to his rapid heartbeat. Forget about the bad stuff, just for a moment. I leaned back to look up at him; he stared back at me, cerulean eyes darkening as they skated across my face, never settling on any one feature yet attempting to devour them all.
Everything felt better when he was around. My throat pinched. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”
He smiled. “Contrary to your world’s beliefs, djinn do not grant wishes. But if I did I would wish to stay with you … awhile.” He swallowed, his hand coming up to brush a tendril of hair from my cheek. My breath caught. What was I doing? He was betrothed. This was wrong.
I gently extricated myself from his arms. “You should go. Alara will probably be wondering where you are.”
His expression shuttered. “Alara is recuperating with her family. She drifts in and out of consciousness, they believe the poison that was injected to subdue her will take time to work its way out. Once she awakens we hope to have more information on what happened to the djinn.”
“Will you let me know when you do?”
He smiled. “Of course. Will you be all right? What will happen now, with the witches?”
The witches could shun me. They could put me on trial. They could make my life very difficult. I could curl up and cry about it and rue the day my powers were unlocked, or I could stand the fuck up, accept responsibility for what had happened, and do my damndest to make sure it never happened again.
“Carmella?”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, but whatever it is I’m not going to hide from it. I’m going to face this head on and find a way to fix it.”
That smile again, the one that turned his savage face into a thing of beauty. “I believe in you. Your soul is that of a warrior, and no battle will defeat you.”
A warrior was the last thing I felt like, but those were ego-boosting words so I’d take them. “What about you? They all saw you.”
He shrugged. “I doesn’t matter any longer. When I sent the cuff, we were in the process of fortifying the lands where our realities overlap. Now I have the measure of these monsters, I was able to pass the information to my warriors. They will patrol and hunt. It matters not who knows of our existence now. Our worlds may be in overlap, but we intend to keep them separate.”
“Yeah, trying to explain away your presence there is a challenge I don’t need right now.”
Urvashi’s snores stopped.
Shit, was she awake?
Paimon’s head whipped around to the door. “Your friend is no longer asleep.” He inclined his head.
This was it. Goodbye again. “Thank you for coming when I called.”
His gaze softened. “How could I not?”
A knock on the door. “Carmella? You okay?”
He stepped back and vanished, leaving me with the imprint of his face in my mind’s eye and the fragrance of his skin on my clothes.
“Hey Urvashi, be out in a minute.”
I wouldn’t think it, wouldn’t acknowledge the thought. But thoughts don’t always heed our will …
I was falling in love with a djinn who belonged to another.
31
“O h my god, your dress!” Urvashi stepped into the bathroom, her eyes wide, hair mussed. Not as mussed as mine though.
“I’m fine. But there was an incident.” My lips trembled, and I pressed them together. “Fuck that. No more tears.”
Urvashi pulled me into the living room. The lamp was on and she sat me on the bed, pressed a glass of water into my hand, and then sat on the floor in front of me.
“Tell me what happened.”
A knock on the front door had us both in freeze frame. It was almost one in the morning. Who the fuck could that be?
“You expecting anyone?” Urvashi asked me.
“No.”
Urvashi’s face hardened. Unfurling her body from the floor she padded over the door and looked through the peephole.
“Who is it?”
She glanced over her shoulder. “Fucking hell, it’s Vritra.”
Oh shit. I couldn’t deal with his overpowering presence right now.
“Shall I let him in?”
If I didn’t let him in he’d probably break the door down. Best just get it over with. “Sure.”
Urvashi opened the door and Vritra strode in. His wild gaze scanned the room and fell on me. “Dammit woman. What the fuck are you playing at?”
“Whoa!” Urvashi placed herself between the two of us. “Calm down.” She glanc
ed at me. “What the heck is going on?”
Virtra’s power surged past Urvashi, making a lunge for me, scraping at my aura and pressing against it as if looking for damage.
His chest rose and fell and he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I apologize. I was worried. You just vanished with that thing.”
His power was still there, pressed against me, but this time instead of being invasive it was kind of soothing.
“He’s not a thing. He’s my friend.” There was no fire in my tone, just bone weariness.
He must have picked up on it, because his next words were delivered in a softer tone. “Did your friend heal you or did you use the skein?”
His words lit the fire of indignation in my chest. “I’m not bloody stupid. Of course I didn’t use the skein again.”
“So this creature, your friend, has the ability to heal too.”
He was fishing, and I couldn’t be arsed. I’d have to explain Paimon to the coven soon enough and I wasn’t telling the whole story twice. “Look. I’m wiped. I need to get some sleep. I figure tomorrow is gonna be a bitch.”
“Yes, well, you caused quite a stir. Ninety percent of the coven is convinced you’re in league with infernal forces from beyond this world.”
My heart rate picked up. “That’s ridiculous and the High Witch knows it. Infernal forces, what a crock. I may be different but it doesn’t make me evil.”
He sighed. “No. It doesn’t.” He took a step toward me but Urvashi blocked his path.
“It’s late,” she said.
His gaze was fixed on me. “This wasn’t your fault. Remember that.” He looked down at Urvashi. “You’ll stay with her?”
She lifted her chin. “That’s the plan.”
His chest rose and fell. “In that case I will leave you to your rest.” He placed a card on the table by the door. “Call me if you need anything. Surely tonight proves you belong with me, with the asura.”
Urvashi closed the door behind him, leaning up against it. “Okay, what the fuck happened tonight? And do not leave anything out.”
_____
Binding Magick: an Urban Fantasy Novel (The Witch Blood Chronicles Book 1) Page 20
