“Breathe Darcy. In and out. Follow me.” He took in a breath.
So did she.
He exhaled softly.
Darcy did the same.
Their breathing fell into sync and her heart rate calmed. “Perfect. Now open your chakras and connect to your powers. Go with it Darcy, let the powers have you.”
Her witch-shimmer slowly warmed from sour milk to a more natural tone. “That's it. I want you to lay your head back and rest now. I'm going to get us out of here.” He closed the door, went around to the driver's side, and climbed in.
Darcy said softly, “Your tat looks the same. Your back looks the same.” She ran her fingers lightly over the hawk.
He felt the feathers ruffle and preen. Looking over at her, he was surprised to see her witch-sheen getting brighter. “You feel better touching my hawk?”
She dropped her hand. “I … yes.” She looked at the steering wheel, then frowned. “How are you going to start the truck?”
Shit. He'd have to go back and search the dead rogues to find the keys. He reached over to open the door and said, “I'll be right back.”
“No! Tell me how to do it.”
Her fear stirred his tat. Axel shut the door, reached out, and took her hand. “It's okay, I won't leave you.” He told her how to direct her powers to start the truck.
She focused her energy, and he felt the hum travel through him as the truck rumbled to life.
He kept hold of her hand, still awed by what she had done. “You saved my mom and sister's lives.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I didn't know what else to do. I knew you'd try and rescue me. You need me to undo the curse.”
“I need you. Period.”
Darcy took in the huge warehouse located next to Axel's club. Three excessively large men stood behind the man she recognized as Sutton. They all turned to watch as she and Axel walked in. Axel had his arm around her and his knife in his hand. “Where's Mom and Hannah?”
Sutton rose from the keyboard slowly, with his hands in clear view. “Easy, Axel. They're upstairs in your condo. Eve told us you were attacked and the rogues got Darcy. Obviously you got her back.” He shifted his gaze to her. “Relax, I'm not going to hurt you, Darcy.”
“Me either,” said the one with the military-short haircut and blue eyes. “I'm Ram.”
“Not really feeling it. I can smell the witch blood but it's just a buzzing feeling, not pain,” said the man dressed all in leather. “I'm Phoenix,” he added.
“So this is the witch chick.” The last man was the smallest. His spiky blond hair caught the overhead lights as he took three steps toward her.
Fear washed through her. She didn't know what to expect from these witch hunters.
“Key,” Axel warned, then his body jerked and a whoosh filled the room.
Darcy felt the feathers explode past her, then curl protectively around her shoulder; the tips rested against her cheek.
Axel had sprouted wings. Again.
Key stopped short, his gray eyes taking in the entire wingspan.
The other three men moved closer behind Key.
“Holy shit, Axel,” Phoenix said. “Forget to tell us something?”
Darcy looked up at his face. A fleeting surprise softened his features. “Hell of a night.” Axel pulled her tighter into his side, his left wing curling in a little more. “None of you are feeling the bloodlust?”
Sutton shrugged. “No more than usual. Not the spike and pain we get when there's a witch around, particularly a witch with drying blood on her clothes.”
Key dragged his gaze from the wings. “I wasn't threatening your witch. Just getting closer to see her.”
“When did you get wings?” Ram asked.
“When the rogues grabbed Darcy—I leaped off a balcony and found out I could fly.” Axel's voice was flat.
Phoenix moved around Axel's side, then returned to the front. “That's fucked up.”
Key slammed his elbow into his ribs. “Language, dumb ass.”
Phoenix looked at her and grinned. “Oops. But wings? Real fucking wings? What's that about?”
The boyish grin on the man with death-dark eyes wearing black leather and never-met-a-rule-he-didn't-want-to-break attitude surprised a smile out of her.
Axel seemed to ease a notch. He shifted beside her, sliding his knife into the holster at his back. “The wings didn't come with an owner's manual.”
“Never heard of a witch hunter getting real wings,” Sutton said.
“Things change. Ever since the curse, everything has changed.”
“They are hawk wings,” Key pointed out. “They match your tattoo exactly. You're not immortal, no thumb ring that I can see. Any appearances from the Wing Slayer?”
“No.”
Darcy could feel Axel's confusion mixed with deep anger over the attack, and hope. She also felt the gruff affection in the room; these men were clearly family to Axel, like Eve and Hannah. Softly, she broke in. “Can you control the wings? Put them away?”
He looked down at her, his green eyes full of curiosity. “I didn't try to make them come out. They just did.”
“Because you thought I was threatening her,” Key said.
Her stomach clenched. She wasn't controlling his wings, she couldn't be. She hadn't called them out, had she? “Please, Axel, try.”
“Okay, you'll need to move. I don't want to hit you.”
She didn't want to step out of the embrace of his hawk. The feel of the soft feathers touching her made the night bearable. But she had to prove to herself that she hadn't done this to him. That she hadn't turned him into a familiar. She forced herself to move toward the men, but stood off to the side. Alone.
Axel turned and took a couple steps to his right, closer to the pool table.
“Damn,” Key said. “Look at that.”
Darcy couldn't look away. The wings jutted out where his shoulder blades were, huge and majestic, while all the muscles of his neck, shoulders, and the torso below his wings corded and rippled with incredible strength. There was no sign of the tattoo.
“Move the wings,” Ram suggested.
Axel fisted his hands on his hips; the wings did a slow flap, fanning the room with their powerful sweep. Then the wings lifted high, folded, and melted into his skin as his hawk tatoo.
She swallowed down her relief. She wasn't controlling his wings, she was sure of it. The room echoed in silence. Everything had happened so fast, Darcy could hardly catch her breath. With Axel's help, she'd managed to heal her cuts most of the way, and get the bullet out of his leg while he was driving. But she was sore and drained. Finally she broke the silence with an inane question. “Do you all live here?”
“Nah.” Phoenix snapped out of his shock the quickest. “We have homes, but we hang here if we're not busy. I was out with a pretty woman when I got the call to get my ass to the warehouse.”
His leather vest left miles of massive arm bare. She was relieved to see the coarse hair on his forearms, and the large wing tattooed over each bicep. “I see.”
“We thought we were going to have to go after you, Darcy,” Ram explained. “But Axel got the job done.”
Stunned, Darcy looked around at all the men watching her. “You would have rescued me? But—”
“Bet your ass we would've,” Phoenix said. “First off, Hannah needs you. Second, I hate rogues. No rogue snatches a witch under our protection. Not happening. Got me?”
She blinked. She'd been so scared when the rogue had had her. She'd prayed Axel could save her, but it hadn't occurred to her that these men, these witch hunters struggling with the blood curse, would try and save her. “Thank you,” she said, feeling overwhelmed. The only other person she'd ever been able to count on was Joe. Oh, God, Joe! “Axel! What if Joe and Morgan go back to the house?”
Axel strode to the men. “Give me a phone.”
Key handed him a cell phone.
He walked it to her. “Call him.”
“Thanks.” She dial
ed Joe's number.
“MacAlister.”
“Joe, it's Darcy. Don't go back to the house. We were attacked—”
“Slow down. Are you all right?”
“Yes. I had some cuts, but I'm alive. So is Axel. Can you stay with Carla? What if they go after her?” Tears started to well up in her throat.
Axel put his arm around her, and took the phone. “Joe, she's okay. Scared, a little hurt, but okay. Darcy has a point, though. I can't send a witch hunter to watch over Carla. And then there's Morgan.”
Axel listened, his face hardening into grim lines.
“It's a strong possibility. This was a well-staged attack. Reed could have been behind it.”
Axel listened then handed the phone back to her. Darcy took it. “Joe, please be careful.”
“I will. Darce are you okay there? I'll come get you.”
“I'm good here. I love you, Joe.” She knew she was probably embarrassing him, but she didn't care.
“Back at you. But seriously, Darce, can you stay out of trouble for a while?”
She almost smiled. “Doubtful.”
“Yeah, I figured. Later.” She hung up. Axel and the men were talking, looking serious.
Sutton said, “I got the blueprints for your dad's place. I put them on the big screen when we were planning to rescue Darcy and possibly you. It was the most likely place we could think of to start searching. We were just starting to study them when you two came in.”
They all looked up to the biggest screen in the bank of monitors. The computer-drafted blueprints showed a big house with an even bigger building behind it.
“These are the original blueprints.” Sutton put another set of blueprints on a smaller screen.
“He expanded the building behind the house,” Axel said.
“We know it used to be a veterinarian's office. I pulled the notes from the architect. He had two barracks added on at the end,” he said, using a laser pointer to show where the buildings were added on. “A control room wired for high-tech computers, then there's notes about a conference room, some smaller rooms, but the thing that really stood out …”
Axel tensed beside her. “What?”
“He kept and updated the surgery room and the kennels.”
Darcy had no idea what it meant, but shivers ran down her spine.
Axel seemed to stop breathing. Then he said in a viciously cold voice, “He's building a compound to turn witch hunters rogue. The surgery room is to slaughter witches, the kennels are to hold the witches until they have the witch hunter they want to turn.” His body vibrated with rage. “He's creating an army of rogues for Young.”
Phoenix's boots rang out on the concrete as he stalked closer and stared up at the blueprint. “Eric Reed would want in on that action.”
Darcy's chakras flung open. Power surged up through her first four and slammed into the power rushing down through her fifth chakra. The power spun around her spine and voices pounded and screamed at a spot in the middle of her forehead.
“Feel that?” Key said. “Axel, your witch is doing something.”
“Her power is surging through the room,” Phoenix added.
She heard them talking but she shut her eyes against pain and dizziness.
“Darcy!” Axel grabbed her chin. “Look at me.”
She couldn't. She kept her eyes closed as the vortex spun harder in a crazy-eight pattern around her spine. The pressure intensified inside her, compressing painfully against the center of her forehead. Then it suddenly burst, blowing open her sixth chakra.
Fallon appeared. She was lying on the ground with blood running from shallow cuts on her arms and legs. Pain-etched lines around her full mouth; her hair was caked with blood and grime. She was in a graveyard, illuminated by a full moon shining down on huge crumbling headstones rising out of unkept grass.
Quinn Young stood over her with a gleaming silver knife in his hand. “Your tricks are worse than the demon witches’. They made me want sex. But you, you used something else, you made me want something that isn't real.”
Fallon met his gaze. “It would be real if you hadn't gone rogue and lost your soul. I would have cared for you, loved you and our child.”
Quinn Young's smooth feminine features twisted into a haunted expression. “Witches, you're all liars.”
“Yet you can't kill me.”
“Tell me where the baby is!” he snarled.
“Our daughter is dead. Stillborn.”
Young crouched down. “Liar.” He slashed the knife across Fallon's still-swollen abdomen.
Her mother screamed in a cracked voice. “She's dead!”
Young put his hand in the warm blood, closing his eyes, absorbing power. “This is real. Power is real. I have enough witch blood to summon Asmodeus.”
“No,” Fallon whispered.
Young kept his hand in Fallon's blood, leaned back and said, “Asmodeus, demon of lechery, jealousy, anger, and revenge, appear! I summon thee from the Underworld by the blood of a witch! Appear!”
The earth trembled, then a hole burst open in the ground, and a dark form slithered up and took shape, three heads on a large body. The smell of burned skin mixed with sulfur.
“Asmodeus,” Quinn said reverently. “You honor me by appearing.”
The demon spoke. “The daughter lives. Somewhere. Kill this witch and find the child.”
Young, still crouched, shifted his gaze to Fallon.
She looked back at him. “Feel inside you, Quinn. You can still make the right choice. Let me go, let your daughter and me live, and the better part of you will live on in your child.”
“Choose.” The demon's voice crackled through the graveyard, making the trees sway and cast bony-fingered shadows. “The power of the Immortal Death Dagger is yours if you kill the witch. You'll be able to kill even an immortal with the dagger.” The three heads talked as one, then raised one hand holding a black knife the size of a man's forearm.
“Ancestors protect us,” Fallon began to chant in a whisper.
One of the three heads turned to look at Fallon, while the other two watched Quinn. “They don't hear her, do they, Quinn?”
He stared at the black knife moving as though it were alive. Writhing in the thick fingers of the demon. “No, you destroyed the Ancestors and the Wing Slayer. That's real power.”
“Take my knife. Kill her.”
Quinn's eyes filled with greed, the pupils dark with lust as he looked at the knife. “What's the cost?”
“Three things. You raise an army, lead them, and kill the witches. You find the girl witch you sired and kill her. Kill any witch hunter who takes wings or they could resurrect that half-breed god, Wing Slayer, and challenge our power.”
Young looked down at Fallon then up at the gleaming black death dagger. Then he chose. With inhuman speed, he grabbed the black dagger and stabbed Fallon.
Darcy heard screams.
“I've got you, come back now.”
She felt Axel's arms around her, her face buried against the hot skin of his chest. Her raw throat told her she'd been screaming. Her head throbbed as if she'd been stabbed with the dagger. Axel ran his hand over her back. She couldn't hold still and realized she was shaking violently.
“Quinn Young summoned Asmodeus with my mother's blood. He killed her and now he has the Immortal Death Dagger.”
“The attack tonight on my safe house wasn't my dad's gig,” Axel said. He had gotten Darcy settled in his condo, set her up with his computers to talk to Carla, then went back down to the warehouse. “It was carefully set up. They knocked out our power and our backup generators. They had a plan.”
“Eric Reed,” Phoenix said.
“Where's Quinn Young?” Ram asked. “What triggered Darcy's vision with your dad's house? Is she connecting Young to the house?”
Key said, “Darcy's vision must be a warning that Quinn Young has the Immortal Death Dagger.”
“We aren't immortal, a regular knife can kill us,” Phoe
nix pointed out.
“Axel has wings, immortality might be next,” Key answered.
They all looked at him. Axel rubbed his neck. “I don't know. I don't fucking know. But Darcy's vision tells us that Young is more dangerous with that Death Dagger, able to kill an immortal now. We know Young's the one calling the shots. Maybe my dad took Reed as a partner at Young's direction.”
“Could be,” Sutton said. “But I'm wondering why you haven't heard from your dad since the cut-up witches in the Hummer?”
Axel frowned, trying to make sense of it all. “You think he's dead?”
“I think it's possible there's been a hostile takeover by Eric Reed. In the last day or two, the path I used to hack into the Rogue Cadre computers has been cut off. New security is in place.”
Axel reached for his cell, flipped through the numbers, and called his dad.
It went straight to voice mail. His phone was off.
“I think you need more from your witch. She's having visions and shit. Show her the blueprints again.”
Axel turned to look at Key. “She needs to save her strength to heal Hannah.”
Key nodded. “Got that. Hannah was terrified when she and your mom arrived, and she looked bad. Pale, shaking, sweaty. The waxing gibbous is three days away. So when is Darcy going to do the spell?”
“She'll try tomorrow at moonrise. On a beach; she says she needs to be at the edge of the ocean for better access to the ley lines.” Darcy was exhausted and sore, and he knew her head still hurt. But she was trying to reach the Ancestors. His hawk wings were fretting in his tattoo, not liking being this far away from her. The feeling created an itching sensation that only Darcy's touch could ease.
“If the spell works, then what?” Phoenix asked. “You'll keep the witch around?”
Axel dropped his cell and turned to fix his gaze on Phoenix. He sat in a chair, his long legs stretched out, peeling an orange with his knife. “I'm not throwing her to the rogues. And there's going to be a pissed-off demon witch looking for her.”
While still stripping the rind, Phoenix said, “Your wings sprang out when Darcy was in danger, and now you're talking like you can't walk away from her. It's as if you are bonded to her in the way of a familiar.”
BLOOD MAGIC Page 26
