Cantrips: Volume #1: Minor Magics Crafted to Amuse and Entertain

by Joey W. Hill

  In that blink of time, he’d known the very reason for his existence was to help her to do that. Not for the good of the world, not because it was some cosmic task he’d been charged to fulfill by the Legion. No. Instead, it was because he couldn’t tolerate her bearing such a burden alone. He wouldn’t allow her to feel another second of loneliness. Being with her might save the universe, and that was all well and good, but the main thing he cared about was being with her, because she’d ended his loneliness as well. She was his balance.

  Over the twenty-two years they’d spent together, she’d finally started believing that. At least a little bit. And she trusted him more than she trusted anyone, but that didn’t change the fact she had to fight an internal enemy with every breath. Because he was her mate, her champion and protector, he’d dedicated himself to helping her shoulder as much of that burden as possible.

  He’d become adept at detecting the slightest shifts in Mina’s moods, because with her, they could be warnings of significant swings—something akin to the shifting of tectonic plates under the earth’s crust that would bring about major quakes. However, the Prime Legion Commander’s daughter being kidnapped and yanked into a Dark One world had thrown everyone off. Since Mina and he had been as much a part of the effort to retrieve her as anyone, he hadn’t been able to follow up on the clues she’d left him earlier in the week. Clues that should have been obvious.

  §

  The most significant one was when she’d told him she wanted to go spend time at their old desert home. They’d explored plenty of other worlds, dimensions and isolated places, but the desert was the first home they’d shared together. When Mina wanted to come back there, it was almost always because she needed to center and ground herself. To return to basics.

  They’d been at a monastery, deep in the mountains of China, but it hadn’t taken long to get back to the desert, not with the winged speed David could summon when needed. Mina had simply shut her eyes and hung on. She didn’t like heights, but she coiled in his sure grasp, her fingers clutched at his nape, legs hooked over his thighs, and he relished the way she felt there. When she completely depended on his care and strength like that, he often had the desire to lazily spin and float, as if he were rocking her in a cradle of air and sky and the reassuring heat of his body. Sometimes she was okay with that, but this time, he felt her vibrating need to return to the desert, so he didn’t indulge the whim.

  Sam always kept the house ready for them, so after they were settled, Mina unwound from their trip by going to the front porch steps, taking a seat on the top one, and gazing out over the terrain. When he joined her, David sat on the step just below her, his back against the rail, his leg stretched out. She curled her bare feet on his thigh, toes dug in like an exotic dark bird perched there. He trailed his fingers idly along the tender pocket behind her knee, the line of thigh accessible under her skirt. Her little shiver stirred his blood, but then he felt the energy unfurl from her.

  As he caressed her with a slow, easy touch, she rearranged the landscaping of natural scrub and sand into a large rock garden like they’d seen in their Asian travels. She sculpted serpentine lines in the sand, carefully placed red and blue stones in balanced stacks, and used other rocks and sand tracks to make oblong circles around the low-lying, hardy shrubs.

  And she accomplished all of it sitting on the front porch steps. Still, quiet, only her bi-colored eyes flickering and her lips pressing together as she manipulated the elements. It was like watching a small child drawing, holding the pencil so carefully, the mouth just so. A great deal of magic was effortless for her, but when she was creating something for her personal desires, she was like an artist who wasn’t sure what the canvas would reflect when she was done. So she was far more meticulous in every detail.

  She had one crimson-colored eye and one blue, both outlined with sooty, thick lashes that only enhanced a breathtakingly beautiful face. However, he’d noted an intensity to her gaze that suggested she was deeper in her head than usual, driven by something unsettling. Between that and her desire to come here, he knew the time was right to probe and see what was disturbing her.

  “Mina, what is it?”

  Those eyes turned to him. The flash of desperation was so unexpected that he immediately straightened. Closing one hand on her leg, he reached up toward her delicate face with the other.

  Before he could say anything further, he’d received the rapid fire mental communication, alerting him, Mina and the entire Legion to Alexis’s kidnapping.

  §

  Returning to the present, he knew that wasn’t a good enough excuse. Though he was experiencing his own reaction to the news of Mina’s pregnancy, he punished himself by shoving it down. He couldn’t rejoice, not until he made sure she was okay. He wanted to celebrate it together, when he could convince her it was something to celebrate. Because he knew that desperate look she’d given him before they had to attend to Alexis. His courageous sea witch was terrified. And fear fed that venomous Dark One blood within her like candy.

  The desert, with its raw beauty and utter desolation, was good for her, a reflection of the balance. He hadn’t questioned her wanting to come back to it after her part in Alexis’s retrieval was done, because she couldn’t be around the Legion for too long. Any elements of pure good upset that precarious seesaw inside her. He didn’t, for they shared a blood link and other history which had apparently offset that aversion to angelic energy, thank the Goddess.

  Good thing you don’t have the same kind of feather dander as the other winged testosterone carriers. Else I’d be allergic to you, too.

  He remembered her saying that years ago, his typically irreverent mate. She still came up with deprecating names for Jonah, Marcellus and the other angels. The Avian Testosterone Team was one of her latest. At this point they took her deprecations as endearments. Perhaps they were, in her charmingly backhanded way.

  He could feel the beat of her heart like his own. But there was a beat he’d missed. Something so earthshattering, Marcellus had given him permission to come and see her right away. Every angel in the Legion understood that when Mina needed him, a delay could quite easily become a serious matter for the whole universe.

  Learning to manage energy flows like powerful ocean currents inside her fragile frame had not been an overnight thing. Over two decades, she’d learned to wield powers far beyond anyone’s expectations, even with her Dark One blood, that poison that could tip her toward much darker forces when excesses occurred.

  While the years had made some things pleasurably predictable, with quiet intimacies and familiar moments he cherished, the Dark One blood could stab through her defenses, trying to take over unguarded moments. Like this one. Learning she was pregnant would knock her off her axis on so many levels. He hated that she couldn’t simply embrace joy, that she always had to stay conscious of that venom in her system, else she might upset the carefully guided boat in which she followed the winding river of her life. Their life.

  But he could help her embrace joy. He would help her embrace this. A child. A child they created. He pushed that sense of elation down again. Not yet. Not until they could share it. Not until he was certain that her reaction wouldn’t result in a rift through the desert that would rival the Grand Canyon as a tourist attraction.

  Despite his grim humor, his heart told him that it wasn’t the universe in danger, but her peace of mind. He cursed himself again for not attending more closely to her. She would have wanted his focus to be on helping Jonah find his daughter and wouldn’t have wanted to be a distraction. But when she was overwhelmed, she turned inward, his prickly sea witch. And that was when the lava threatened to overflow, incinerating everything in the vicinity.

  §

  As he landed in the sculpted garden in front, he reached out for her with his senses. It wasn’t difficult to find her. He followed the scent and sound of the ocean.

  He’d gotten a brief glimpse of it, which was why he’d landed in the front.
In the backyard, she’d created a sea. Small waves rushed up to kiss the base of the porch, then ebbed back from the sandy strip of beach she’d made. She could create illusions, but this was the real thing, the smell of salt water filling his nostrils, the spray spattering up along the porch boards. He saw small fish swimming in the current and, when the water receded, crabs and crawdads tunneled back into the wet sand. The sea stretched out a good half mile in three directions, fading into the shimmering illusion that was the horizon where the sun’s heat met the sand. A trio of dolphins surfaced a hundred feet away from the porch, cavorting then submerging, telling him she’d created the ocean’s depth as well.

  A few weeks ago, one of the things she’d done with that agile mind of hers was to create a very large and wide pit, simply depressing the earth with her mind like a large thumb pressing down into the sand and rock. She’d pushed the displaced earth up to form the lip and reformed the terrain of an area the size of a football field. She’d shifted plants, bugs and animal life of all kinds, because restoring what she disrupted was part of her many exercises in controlling her power. She could create and destroy. And some days, the urge toward one was far stronger than the other. That was where he came in. He helped her pull back from that darkness when the balance was disrupted, when things became too difficult.

  Because of that, when he saw her, he knew he had been right to come home.

  She was sitting on a rock protruding from the center of that sea, and she’d shifted to her merform. She didn’t have the typical tail, the whimsical rainbow of scales that many mermaids did. Sea Barbies, she called them, in her caustic tone that had a sultry rasp to it. To him, her voice was like fingers trailing up his spine. He knew the pleasure of that feeling. More than once, when he’d left their bed because his sleep had been restive, she’d come to find him. He might be sitting naked in a window sill, looking out over whatever place they were visiting, and those slim fingers would trail up the line of his back, to his nape. Her lips would press against his skin, arms circling him in comfort and invitation in the darkness. She showed him affection and love in a way he alone experienced from her.

  When she was in merform, her legs were replaced by two long, powerful tentacles, complete with rows of suckers on the bottom to anchor her. Those tiny cups contained a venom which stung like hell. She’d unfurled the tentacles over the rock to hold her to it as the water washed over the stone surface. Before she transformed, she’d been wearing a simple blue dress that fell to her calves. So now the thin cotton clung to her hips, hiding the blue and black gleaming scales he knew marked the transition from the tentacles to the curve of hip. The wet dress, the blue color now a dark blue, molded to her breasts, the tight nipples. Her ebony hair was wet and slicked back on her skull, beads of moisture still clinging to her thick lashes. Her hair obscured the blue eye, revealing the crimson one only.

  She was watching the movement of the water, a brooding Goddess. Crabs had crawled up onto the rock with her. One, balanced on the broadest part of the fabric-covered portion of the tentacle close to her hip, cracked some form of shellfish and shoved it into his tiny mouth with pincers.

  Her gaze lifted and met his across the sea she’d created as her fortress. Her expression was pale, strained.

  To most people, guarded was her natural state. However, when she was that way with him, it was a trigger. It was a signal to prepare for battle, only the steady, dangerous calm with which he responded went to a far deeper level. He took a stance on the bedrock of his own soul, because it was from there he could best anticipate where she would need defense and reinforcements. Inside Mina dwelled a difficult female who had deep passions, great curiosity and a heart far larger than anyone realized. But the blood of her Dark One sire always wanted to destroy all that. It wanted to make Mina what every Dark Spawn before her had become—a creature of dark evil, with no redemption.

  That wasn’t going to happen. Not as long as she had David to fight for her. Using his wings to take him aloft, he skimmed over the water and came to her rock. His bare feet gripped with sure purchase as he landed just behind and to the right of her. When her head turned, he could see the blue eye through the strands of her hair. It studied him in a more intimate way, roving over his mostly bare body in the belted half-tunic, the harness over his chest that held his daggers. She knew every inch of his skin, had explored him with a child’s delight and a woman’s endless craving. Seeing that in her look, he could tell she’d missed him. It eased his gut, but he remained cautious, careful. Particularly when her gaze flickered up to his face and what she saw there tightened her own expression.

  “You know.”

  He knew Clara had told him the truth, but hearing it verified from Mina’s lips made it real. He wanted to reach out and pull her to him. But she’d recoil, so he quelled the compulsion with effort and merely nodded. “You should have told me.”

  She shifted, a bitter curl to her lip. “It shouldn’t have happened. You promised not to…”

  “You asked, Mina. Remember?” He could be careful and tender, but he wouldn’t allow her to deny what he was to her. Because of that, he closed his hand on hers, his fingers wrapping around her wrist so she couldn’t withdraw. “Actually, you begged,” he murmured, his voice filled with husky memory, and a hint of demand that brought her attention more fully upon him.

  §

  While angels climaxed like most males, they could choose when to release fertile seed. Not long after they’d met, he’d done it to her; an attempt to ensure she didn’t give up on her own life if he lost his. But he’d made that decision without her knowledge or consent. Perhaps because of that, or because Fate was not yet ready for a child of their making, it hadn’t taken. He’d promised her he wouldn’t do that again, not unless she asked. Since then, she’d asked only a handful of times, and only in moments when it had to do with a need to overcome the antithesis of creation that roiled through her blood.

  A month or so ago, she’d had an awful day. The magic that rolled through her so powerfully could twist her muscles into knots—and her mind. That night, when she slept, the nightmares came for her. She woke, trembling and sweating in his arms. He started by kissing her, turning her over to knead her shoulders, her back. Sensing an even more complicated knot inside her heart, he drew her up onto all fours, spreading kisses along her spine, teasing that shallow valley at the top of her buttocks. It made her quiver, even as his strength and will held her motionless.

  When he nuzzled the top of her thigh, then moved over, finding her sweet cunt with his mouth, her thighs parted automatically, opening to him. David, I need you. Help…

  He teased and tormented her, got her gasping and himself aroused to the point of painful hardness with her taste on his tongue. He needed to be inside her. Turning her over again, he laid down upon her as her eyes drifted over the spread of his wings. One white and one black, a physical mirror of what was within her. Recognizing it, she spread her arms out to clutch a thick handful of feathers in each hand, stroking that texture. As the wings quivered, flexing to help increase the strength of his thrusts within her, her lips parted, a soft sound of need. He pressed his mouth to her throat, her sternum.

  Surrender everything to me, Mina. Let the darkness recede. I’m here.

  Give me life, David…let your seed go tonight and fall where it will. I need to feel life, not death. I need your life.

  She clasped her arms over his shoulders, buried her face into his neck and kept whispering it to him, until the climax crashed over them, stealing away all words.

  §

  Because of the morass of Mina’s dark soul, he wasn’t always privy to everything happening with her, so he’d assumed, as had been the case those handful of other times, that she hadn’t conceived. Raphael had long ago said it was a distinct possibility they couldn’t create children, given the physical trauma she’d endured as a child. And since over two decades had passed, David had accepted that. It was a dream he would have cherished, but he
knew with Mina there was no certainty to anything, and his focus was her. It was enough.

  But she had conceived. She was carrying their child right now. This close to her, he was nearly overcome with the desire to lean forward, lay his palm over her abdomen, feel life and creation, the proof of their love. Proof that it did overcome death and evil. But she was a spinning top right now, not sure how to land, no point of reference for dealing with this.

  Because she’d said nothing else to him yet, he released her and eased back. Gesturing around them, he noted, “I’m guessing there are some lizards, scorpions and other desert creatures not so happy with you right now.”

  She made a dismissive noise, jerking her head toward the opposite side of the house. For the first time, he noticed an intriguing orb made up of a slowly oscillating parade of the displaced animals, plants and crawling insects. They were in a trancelike state, the orb glowing with a green mist, indicating the earth-based energy holding them there. It floated around the side yard like a large, sphere-shaped balloon. “They’re relaxed, asleep in a way,” she said.

  Such multi-faceted tasks were nearly effortless for her now. Though Sam, the nearby shaman who worked with her, was a stoic soul who didn’t show much emotion, David knew he found her powers to be awe-inspiring. While David never underestimated her abilities, there were other things about her he found awe-inspiring. The way she looked when she slept in his arms, her mouth soft and hands curled against his chest. Those rare times she smiled. Her clever mind and sharp tongue.

  “I miss the ocean.” She stared down at it.

  David touched her shoulder. When her lashes flickered up, he saw the desperation in her glance. “I can take you there,” he said quietly, letting a knuckle drift up her cheek. “I have wings, super speed and everything.”