by Anya Bast
And she would work toward that goal until the day she died.
The phone rang. Isabelle set her cup down and stretched to pick up the cordless handset from the breakfast bar. “Hello?”
Silence.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
She punched the Off button and stared at it thoughtfully. She needed to have caller ID installed so she could catch the prankster who kept trying to get a rise out of her. There had been calls like that once every night at this same time for the last week and she grew weary of them.
In her darkest moments, she imagined it was Thomas trying to contact her. Then she pulled herself back from the shaky edge of grief-induced insanity and reminded herself that interdimensional communication wasn’t possible.
The phone rang again, right in her hand, startling her. She punched the On button. “Listen, punk—”
“Isabelle.”
She knew that voice, that accent. Shock ripped through her like an electric charge. “I thought you were dead.”
Long pause. “No. I did look into the eyes of death, however.” Breathy, low voice. “Much the same way I did back in that limo with you.”
“You can only mean you looked into Boyle’s eyes. He got you out of Gribben, didn’t he?”
“Oui and he meant to kill me. I believe he was a bit besotted with you. Meant to kill me on your behalf, Isabelle.”
“Why the hell didn’t he?” she snarled into the phone. That Stefan should be calling her while Thomas languished in the demon dimension killed a part of her.
Another long pause that Isabelle didn’t like one bit. “Alternate plans were made.”
All thought momentarily fled her mind. That sounded ominous. She swallowed hard, a bit of her bravado gone. “Well, then it’s a damn good thing Boyle is dead.”
“Yes, a pity.” He drawled it.
She found a long, loose hank of hair at her nape and pulled at it while she paced the kitchen. “Other than to share with me the glorious news of your continued existence in this world, did you have another reason for calling me this evening?”
“I wanted to say I forgive you.”
She stopped short and actually sputtered for three seconds. “F-forgive me? You forgive me? You—”
“Last year I lost the only father I ever had. I understand you lost your sister and so I have absolved you of your sin. I will not seek retribution.”
“Well.” What the hell? “Uh. That’s incredibly big of you, Stefan.” Her voice dripped sarcasm.
“This is the first and only free pass you will get from me.”
“Wow. I can hardly contain my gratitude.” She drew a breath, mastering her anger. “You know we’ll keep hunting you.”
She could hear the smile in his voice when he answered. “You can try, but I have become wary of beautiful redheads of late. You will not find it easy.”
“Nothing worth achieving ever is.”
Click.
Isabelle held the cordless phone in her hand and stared at it, cold dread inching its way up her spine. Stefan remained in this world while Thomas had been expelled from it. Was there no justice?
After a moment she replaced the handset and turned back to the counter. Damn it. Her tea was cold. She picked up the mug and set it near the sink, then leaned against the counter and closed her eyes. Lady, she wanted Thomas back. With every fiber in her body, with every breath she drew.
Impulsively, she grabbed her keys and left her apartment, letting the door slam shut behind her.
No way was she getting any sleep tonight anyway, and there was a stack of half-translated texts at the Coven just waiting for her.
CLAIRE ENTERED THE CELL, LETTING THE DOOR STAY open as long as she could without drawing suspicion because she knew the light made the earth witch, Thomas, content. On the bad days, on the days his body was wracked with fever, he said it made him think of a woman named Isabelle. He talked of her constantly when he was delirious.
Now, the delirium had passed. There weren’t any more bad days, either. Not real ones, anyway.
The door closed with a metallic thump and darkness closed around her tight as a fist. Water trickled in the far corner of the small, dank cell. The drip, drip, drip must drive the prisoners crazy.
The man, the first aeamon Claire had seen since the death of her mother, knelt on the floor, his arms strung out on either side of him by heavy chains, chains that were resistant to this one’s magick. His powerful body had been brought to heel as much as the Ytrayi could bring a witch such as this to heel.
They’d shorn his hair because the Ytrayi knew it held power. His once long, beautiful hair now stuck up in uneven tufts. But they’d left the tattoo alone. She had thought they might cut it from his back, but they hadn’t bothered. The only reason for that was they underestimated him and his magick.
Just as they had always underestimated her.
It was ego. The daaemon thought themselves to be superior in every way to the aeamon. What the daaemon didn’t understand was that the spell that been cast to allow the birth of witches so long ago had been born of Eudae and had linked the aeamon eternally to this land. Witches were more in tune with the daaemon’s own planet than they were.
Thomas looked up and moved his arms, his muscles flexing. A beard shadowed his face, but Claire knew he was handsome under the hair. Strong chin, black eyes that held heat and anger barely banked, full lips that seemed made for traveling over a woman’s skin. She responded to him like a woman did to a man. She couldn’t help it. He was the first eligible male she’d ever encountered. Eligible, but a prisoner.
Selfishly, she wanted to keep him, to seduce him. She wanted something here, someone who was totally hers. But this man didn’t see her, not the way she would have him see her. His whole heart and mind was centered on Isabelle.
And Claire was going to do all she could to see he got back to her.
She’d been sent to tend Thomas and act as translator because she was the only person besides Rue who spoke his language. Soon the daaemon would realize what a mistake that had been.
“Claire,” he greeted, his voice strong and sure. Good. When she’d first been sent to him, he’d been sick and broken.
She nodded, walking near him and setting her burdens to the floor — a bucket of hot, soapy water and a rag. Secreted on her person she also had a razor, a package of food, and medicine rolled up in a bit of cloth, even antiseptic wash for his mouth.
Claire had been instructed to care for Thomas, to keep him alive — barely alive — so that the questioning and beatings they put him through during the day didn’t kill him. She’d been doing her job.
Well.
Much better than the Ytrayi had ever intended.
His magick was fierce and strong, fiercer and stronger here on Eudae than on Earth because his homeland fed him. The daaemon wanted Thomas weak enough that he couldn’t use his power. She wanted him strong enough to break out of here. And tonight she had everything in place.
The Ytrayi thought they had her under their thumb. It was time she showed them how mistaken they were.
Smiling to herself, she dipped the rag into the water and placed it to his skin. Carefully, she wiped clean the grime and dried blood from his body. Every night she did this, wiped away the evidence of the beatings he received and tended his wounds. She took her time, took her pleasure in the hard satin stretch of his body and the way his skin quivered under her touch. Undoubtedly, he fantasized it was his lover who caressed him. Claire didn’t care so long as she was the one with her hands on him.
Isabelle could have him tomorrow. Until then, he was hers.
Tonight, she did not speak. Normally, in soft, hushed murmurs, she tutored him in ways to use his magick against his captors. Claire had learned a lot in the twenty-five years she’d been trapped on this rock. She’d learned far more than Rue realized.
When she picked up the razor and set it to his face, he jerked away from her. “You’ve never shaved me be
fore,” he rasped.
She smiled and her face hurt from it. Claire couldn’t remember the last time her mouth had moved that way. “For Isabelle,” she admonished him. “You don’t want to go to her looking like…what is that creature? I can hardly remember…a yeti?”
He swallowed hard. “Is it time?” He sounded like a starving man being offered a three-course meal.
Her smile lingered in response to the barely leashed eagerness in his voice. She slid the razor over his face, ridding it of the three week’s worth of hair. “Your magick is curled deeply in you now, trained by me and ready to strike. I believe you’re ready. Have you been acting weak and broken in front of Rue and the others?”
He nodded.
“Have you been casting the glamours I’ve been feeding you to make you appear dirty and injured?”
“Yes.”
She smiled. Smiling felt nice once her muscles grew accustomed to it. “Good.”
After she’d fed him the flatbread and meat she’d tucked into her pockets, let him wash his mouth, and administered the final dose of high-powered medicine she’d had to steal daily from the doctors, Claire stood and backed away from him. “Demonstrate,” she commanded.
Magick prickled along the nape of her neck. Her own earth magick responded to his tap with a low purr in the center of her chest. She closed her eyes and sighed into it. Around her the entire cell pulsed, breathed like a living thing for a moment. The walls expanded outward and then inward. The ceiling cracked. Dust and rock rained down and the floor beneath her feet rumbled.
Claire opened her eyes, shivering a little at the display of power. “Yes, you’re ready to take on the daaemon.”
Even in the dim light of the cell, his expression tightened and his eyes glowed with eager threat. She’d fed him charms over the course of the last three weeks, so many that he should have enough tricks up his sleeve to make it from his cell to the doorway. Everything was ready.
When Rue had put her in charge of keeping Thomas alive, she’d answered him with properly downcast eyes…but in her mind, she’d begun planning this.
They’d never broken her, the bastards.
She tapped her magick, drawing it straight up from Eudae herself, and the chains binding him snapped. Thomas couldn’t touch those chains…but she could.
Thomas straightened his long, broad frame just as the guards threw the door open. His show of magick would not have gone unnoticed. The two hulking daaemon stopped short just inside the doorway and Thomas struck like a lightning bolt, raising power and directing it at them. It pulsed along her skin, tasting of a place she couldn’t remember but missed with all her heart, tasted like home, and then the guards were down. Dead, Claire had no doubt.
Losing no time, they stepped over their bodies and raced down the corridor of the prison before more guards arrived.
At the end, they turned the corner and ran straight into an entire group of daaemon.
TWENTY-EIGHT
ISABELLE LEANED OVER A SHEAF OF PAPERS IN THE library, squinting against the exhaustion that had overtaken her. The room was dark, but for the light illuminating her immediate area. Micah and the others helping them on this project had long since retired.
She was no scholar, didn’t even have a college education, but since Thomas’s disappearance she’d had a crash course in lots of esoteric subjects she’d never had cause to be interested in before, like the nuances of Aramaic and the delicate intricacies of earth magick.
Until now the Coven had had no reason to delve into historical documents kept by non-magickals, but since their witchy origins had been revealed, Micah had been procuring them and scouring them for any information that might fit in with what they’d received from the Duskoff. In the process, knowledge that needed to be closely guarded from the warlocks had been discovered. If Thomas hadn’t been trapped over there, they would’ve let it stay buried forever. It was quite practical and some of it very dangerous.
Mumbling to herself, she read the line giving her trouble for the fiftieth time and then double-checked the three translations she had, trying to figure out which one fit with rest of the text.
She sat back, rubbing the bridge of her nose and closing her bloodshot eyes. “I really need to let Micah handle this,” she mumbled to herself.
They were growing closer to a breakthrough for getting back to Eudae every day, giving her just enough hope to continue on. She tried not to think about how long Thomas had been over there or that the odds grew slimmer every day that he still lived. Those were not things she could dwell on.
Isabelle leaned forward and laid her head on the papers in front of her. Sleep pulled at her, but she resisted. Just needed to rest her eyes a bit….
A warm hand closed around her shoulder. Her breath caught in her throat, arrested by the familiarity of the touch. She would know the warmth of that hand anywhere, the weight of it. Her eyes opened slowly.
“Isabelle?”
His voice. Her name on his lips.
She had to be dreaming.
Isabelle lifted her head, tears stinging her eyes. This couldn’t be real. She pushed the chair back, rose and turned around.
Thomas stood before her still dressed in the same drawstring pants he’d been wearing three weeks ago. His hair, tangled and matted, stuck up in tufts around his head. Someone had cut it…badly. His now short hair threw his brutally handsome face in angular relief. He’d lost at least twenty pounds. Someone had tried to clean him up, but dirt and grime still marked his skin, as well as a profusion of cuts and bruises. He smelled heavily of blood and demon magick.
Isabelle didn’t care.
She stepped toward him, hand outstretched, trying to gain a foothold on the moment. Blinking, she said, “I fell asleep. I’m dreaming.”
Thomas stepped toward her and yanked her into his arms. “You’re not dreaming, Isabelle. Do you think anything in this universe could stop me from getting back to you?”
Then he lowered his mouth to hers and proved to her that he was, indeed, flesh and blood. His warm lips skated over hers softly, then pressed down possessively. His tongue speared between her lips and rubbed against hers with a ferocity that stopped her breath in her throat. His fingers curled into her hair, his arms strong around her body.
He held her like he’d never let go.
Isabelle sobbed against his lips, tasting her tears as they ran into her mouth. “How?” she murmured. Her fingers found solid purchase around his shoulders. “What did they do to you?”
“I’m okay.” His voice came out scratchy but strong and steady. “They just roughed me up a little and showed me some demon hospitality when I refused to share information with them.”
Fudging the truth for her sake. She could feel it. As usual, even now, he tried to protect her. “I don’t believe you.”
He took a moment to answer. “They didn’t like it when I refused to share every aspect of Coven business and our dealings with the Duskoff.”
“They tortured you.” Her voice sounded angry and flat to her own ears, accusatory. “You told them to let me go and keep you.”
He nodded. “I did. I love you, Isabelle.”
She swallowed hard. “Why did they send you back?”
“They didn’t. I escaped. I had help on the inside, a woman named Claire. She slipped me extra food, treated my wounds, gave me charms to make me seem more injured and sick than I was, taught me—”
“Taught you?”
“She had earth magick like I’ve never felt before. Strange and powerful. She taught me how to use my magick against the demons. With her help, I gained enough strength that I broke myself out. It was dicey getting from the cell to the doorway, but we managed to get through all the obstacles in our path.”
“Who was she?”
“I don’t really know. I could never get her to say much to me. I don’t know why she was there or how she got there in the first place. At the end, I tried to get her to come with me, but she refused.”
“She wanted to stay?”
“I don’t think so, Isabelle. I don’t think she felt like she had a choice for some reason.”
Poor woman. Isabelle would forever be in her debt. She thought about their research on opening another doorway. Maybe she could repay this woman for what she’d done.
She dropped her head to his shoulder and held onto him like she was drowning. “I can’t believe you’re back.”
He brushed his fingers through her hair. “It was the thought of you that sustained me while I was there.”
She raised her head. “I’m glad the thought of me got you through hell and back, but you shouldn’t have done what you did.”
He shook his head. “Not even another word.” His voice had an edge of steel to it. “When I saw an opportunity to free you, I took it.”
She pushed away from him a little. “Thomas, you never stop—”
He dragged her up against him and she angled her head to brush his lips. The taste and feel of his mouth was like sunshine on her skin after a year of constant night. “Don’t pull away from me,” he whispered. “Not ever.”
She smiled against his lips. “I’m not going anywhere.”
THOMAS SLIPPED HIS HAND TO ISABELLE’S WAIST, reveling in the warmth of her skin radiating through the fabric of her shirt and into his palm.
“You need to see the doctor,” she murmured into his neck.
His arms tightened around her. “I am seeing my doctor.”
She raised her head. “I’m serious, Thomas.”
He touched her cheek. “So am I. Look, I’ll be fine. I just want to spend some time with you now. The doctor and the rest of the Coven have me tomorrow. I want to be yours tonight.”
She looked up at him with a raised eyebrow. “Mine tonight? Baby, you’re mine forever.”
“Then let’s go upstairs. I need a good bath and then I need you.”
“Healing waters I can do. Stay here a moment and give me a head start.” She leaned up and kissed him tenderly. He closed his eyes at the sweet pressure of her mouth on his, his body going tight as a bowstring with the need to be one with her. She broke the kiss with a slow groan and murmured, “I’ll see you upstairs.”
