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

by Joey W. Hill

  Her lips twisted. “But we have to fly. You know how I feel about heights. That warp-speed flight from China was bad enough.”

  “I told you we could have taken a more leisurely pace. You wanted it to be over fast.”

  When she made a face at him, he smiled. He moved his touch down her arm and found her fingers. The hungry crab scuttled away. “Shift, Mina, and I’ll take you to the ocean.”

  When she didn’t move, he leaned in and brought his mouth to hers. She nipped at him, but he simply cupped the back of her skull, keeping his movements steady but inexorable. He gave her the heat of his mouth, his desire and demand. Her fingers curled into the harness that held his weapons, nails scraping his skin. As she tightened her grip, the straps cut into his shoulders. The emotions unfurled, and he brought her further into him, pulling her loose from the rock so she was coiled in his lap, her tentacles briefly sliding over his back, his hip. Energy shimmered over her and they became a woman’s legs again, locked around his hips, her straddling his lap. As he framed her petite face in his hands, threading his fingers through her hair to hold her, her eyes were tormented.

  She pulled back, enough to whisper. “I can’t do it, David. I can’t. I see how you feel about it, and I can’t share that.”

  “Sshhh.” He cupped her face, brushed his lips over her mouth. “You will be a wonderful mother. I know it.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I can’t…David, what if—the Dark One blood…a child is delicate, fragile…” Surging up abruptly, she pushed away from him. “You’ll have to take it away from me. Keep it elsewhere. And it will need a parent, it will need you, so I’ll lose you. I’ll lose everything. We can’t let this happen. I won’t let this happen.”

  There it was, that hated, roiling darkness, feeding off her terror, making it worse. As she did a rapid-shift of form again, he ducked the swipe of a tentacle that would have bruised the hell out of his thigh and left a trail of welts. Propelling himself vertically to avoid injury, he swept over the lashing appendage and caught her shoulders and waist to bring her against him, his wings curving on either side of her. “It has happened, Mina. It’s done.”

  “It’s a mistake.”

  “Nothing that ever happens between you and me is a mistake.” When he interjected calm authority in the tone, he felt her tremble. He sensed the shift once more, as if she were the pendulum of a manic clock. The height difference between them increased as she stood on human feet again, the top of her head barely at his chin. To draw her attention, he closed his fingers on her wrist, bringing her hand up so he could match it, palm to palm. “Look. Look at this. Look at me.”

  As she did, her bi-colored gaze flashing, he directed her gaze to the connection, his larger, broader palm pressed to her smaller, slimmer one. “It will be as easy and wondrous as that. You remember how many times we’ve done this, lying together at night? You’re half asleep, dozing, and yet you find my hand, lift it from where it’s cupped around you, around a breast, or your waist or shoulder, and you hold it up to your palm in the dusky, predawn light. It’s a touchstone for you, a way to remember we’re together.”

  Her mouth tightened, but he wouldn’t let her move the palm away, though she tried. He just tightened his grip. “Now, imagine a tiny hand between ours, held there between us. There's nothing we can't hold together, right? We’ve proven that for a while now. Fate knows we’re ready. It’s time for the next daughter of Arianne to have her own sea witch, just as the legend promises.”

  “No. It wasn’t meant to be.” That darkness was in her eyes, and it spawned a chill in his vitals, recognizing its desires and intentions. He had to take a moment, steady himself and determine how to respond. He knew the true danger wasn’t his volatile mate destroying the universe; the problem was the war she fought with her soul. So the moment was entirely, extremely personal. For both of them.

  “Would you kill our child, Mina? My child?” His fingers flexed upon her, bringing her closer, so their bodies were flush, every curve of hers against every hard muscle of his. Her head was tilted up because his fingers had wound into the strands, tugging back so she had to stare up into his eyes. “Don’t you let that sire’s blood of yours answer the question. I want it from your lips, your heart. The heart you know belongs to me.”

  Part Two

  Yes.

  The Dark One blood within her hissed it. David had some ability to read her mind, an ability Mina knew he didn’t need to use. He could command the truth from her with a simple, intent look, like now.

  And though the blood’s answer was the truth, looking into his brown eyes, at the strands of hair that fell carelessly over his fine brow, the taut, stern lines of his handsome face, he’d commanded the answer from a different part of her. A part that responded to everything he demanded from her and begged for more.

  Mina closed her eyes, her fingers sliding into the openings of his, lacing them together even as everything else in her body went rigid, afraid. “I can’t be a parent, David.”

  “Answer me, Mina.”

  “No. And yes. Two answers from the same person, the same twisted creature that no one but you trusts. I can’t be a parent.”

  “Anna trusts you. And I’ll bet you can be a great mother.”

  “I have no experience, no point of reference.”

  “My mother made me jump off of a building, and your mother never showed you an ounce of affection. So there’s two things we know not to do. How could we do any worse than them?”

  The unexpected and absurd comment was a stick jammed in that dangerously spinning wheel of her mind. He gave her his slight smile, a half curve of his mouth, as he retrieved her other hand, laying it on his chest. “We can do this, Mina.”

  His heart was beating faster than usual. Her own accelerated, because he’d deliberately placed her touch on the imprint of her hand that had been burned into his flesh so long ago. He’d allowed her to mark him, connecting her to him irrevocably. Of course, he’d really accomplished that the first time she’d ever met him. Call me if you come to any harm… Those were the words he’d left her with on that first fateful meeting, and he’d never backed away from them since.

  When he is away with the Legion, the babe will cry, but you will be afraid to touch her. The Dark One blood was an insidious whisper, a serpent coiling through the maze of her mind, impossible to track or silence. You will run away in the desert, leaving her alone. She will learn that no one comes, so there’s no point to crying. The lesson your own mother taught you. But one day, you will be unable to resist, and you will come into her nursery, a malevolent spirit among all the pink and pretty things that David has given or made for her, for his daughter. You will crush her tiny skull with a mere thought, and you will smile at the feeling, laugh as her life vanishes like a blown out candle… And then your angel will leave you.

  What is it they say? Sons marry their mothers. His murdered him, so it all comes full circle. It is fate.

  She clawed at her eyes. She was going to stab her fingers through the soft tissue and gouge out her mind’s eye, wherever it was lurking, so she wouldn’t have to see the images unfolding there. But it was like a recurring dream where she was sliding over a cliff and there was no purchase, no way to stop herself from falling into the abyss below. The baby was screaming, but she cut the scream short. The head would give like a ripe melon, so easy. She wouldn’t have to do it with magic. She could do it with her bare hands.

  David had a firm grip on her wrists and was pulling her nails away from her eyes. He anticipated her so well, she hadn’t had a chance to make the first puncture. Unfortunately, he didn’t anticipate the percussion of energy that exploded from her, probably because she didn’t see it coming herself. It simply detonated, like a timer hidden in her mind. He was flung away from her, the blast somersaulting him over the sea she’d created, the waters heaving in agitation. Above, the sky was dark and ominous, storm clouds gathering over their part of the world.

  Earlier, she
’d shifted from human back to merform in rapid succession, as if trying to shed a skin, but she was still Mina in all of them. The only purpose to it was movement, a way of keeping ahead of the pain, like walking out an agonizing cramp that would never end. Now she let the volatile energy propel her into the air and she twisted there, screaming out her rage and frustration as she morphed into her dragon form. Her scales flashed as lightning forked from the sky and struck the sea in several places, electrifying it. She shot upward, toward that boiling sky, the violence of it, locked in full pitch battle with the Dark One blood.

  It was a monster, a red demon with a gaping, fang-filled, saliva-dripping maw. It stared back at her mind’s eye with a burning gaze. She could meet it, hate for hate, fury for fury. You won’t touch my child. You won’t. I will give her to David. I will let him go, for her. You will never take from me what I’m not willing to give.

  She’d go through the storm clouds, far into the universe until she couldn’t breathe, until she choked off air for both sides of herself. It wouldn’t kill her, but it would bring blessed oblivion for awhile.

  She already knew she wouldn’t survive without David. A miraculous, terrible truth. Perhaps, in some twisted way, the Daughters of Arianne curse wasn’t gone. Only now, it was the sea witch, not the mermaid, whose life would be forfeit to ensure the survival of the next generation. She’d never kill herself, but without David she couldn’t contain the darkness within her. And if she couldn’t contain the darkness, she couldn’t be allowed to live. He’d made her an oath, all those years ago. If ever it had to be done, it would be him. He’d promised. But she hadn’t expected to care about him so much, and now she wasn’t sure if she could do that to him. She’d ask Jonah to do it. She wouldn’t inflict that upon David’s daughter, the knowledge he’d been the one to take her mother’s life, no matter how necessary an act it would be.

  David had recovered as fast as the lightning streaking through the sky, but she’d expected that. Feeling him coming up behind her, she spun and shot out a stream of flame that illuminated the boiling clouds. He evaded the strike, deftly missing being singed. The power and grace in his warrior’s move reminded her that there was a reason he was one of the youngest lieutenants in the Dark Legion. And he was hers. For now. But not forever.

  Her heart folded in on itself, a pain so great her roar changed, became shrill and piercing, a keening cry of loss and grief. She couldn’t bear it. She went higher and deeper into the cloud cover. The lightning and thunder electrified and reverberated, both reactions shaking her to the core. She wanted closer to it, wanted to feel their shattering touch, those powerful, indifferent elements. They wouldn’t hurt her, or the barely just conceived life growing within her. She could let her daughter feel what it was to be in the body of an infant Goddess, exultant and dreadful at once.

  Feathers brushed her back. She twisted with a snarl, but he’d already whipped beneath her, coming up between her lethal front talons. She swiped, but again, he was already gone, though she was close enough a spray of feathers swirled through the air over her claws. Behind her again. Under, over. She was disoriented, flipping over and back to try and see him, the dragon part of her mind responding with mindless bloodlust to the taunt of prey. She was okay with that. She didn’t want to think, didn’t want to be Mina again, because then she’d see that delicate baby, her baby. She’d be painted with blood and death in hundreds of different ways. Mina would go mad long before it became more than a tiny heartbeat deep in her womb.

  David landed on her back, his strong arms sliding around her dragon’s neck, his thighs pressed into her shoulders. As her wings pumped, trying to dislodge him, his own were providing a counter force, pulling her back out of the heart of the electrical disturbance, but since she was creating it, it would follow her wherever she wished, so the clouds continued to swirl around them like a black tornado, the static and heat from the lightning crackling through the air.

  She was braced for him to attempt all sorts of brutal methods to bring her back to reason, to get her to shift and dissipate the storm. Instead, he began to sing.

  David had a particular gift for music magic. In battle, she’d seen him charge his daggers with specific tones to increase their deadly potency. When he’d first come to Heaven, his aptitude with it had suggested he might become part of the Choral Legion, instead of the Dark Legion, but he’d had too many demons to purge from his own soul, so he’d brought both skills to bear when fighting Dark Ones.

  But this was another face of his talent, one he used only on her. It was a song she didn’t know, and try as she might, a part of her embattled mind couldn’t help but lock onto it, trying to figure it out. Her wings beat hard, one more furious spasm, then she was hovering, breathing fast, smoke coming from her nostrils. Thunder vibrated through her body and his legs tightened on her sides. The hands gripping her neck constricted over her windpipe, hampering her breathing. He did that sometimes during their rougher lovemaking, gripping her throat, inflaming her need that much more, making her get even wetter for him. He understood that about her, her need for pain and discomfort, his aggressive possession to balance the softer emotions. Somehow David always managed to bring both into any moment, even a very difficult one like this.

  They’d been together twenty years, and still, when things went this far, she was always taken by surprise by the miracle of it, that he pulled it off every time. That he could bring her back.

  Trust me, Mina. Shift. Shift to human form.

  She made one more half-hearted attempt to dislodge him, to reach his unprotected bare thigh with her back set of claws, but that was the dragon more than herself. He made a disapproving noise of warning and tightened his hold again, but he added a provocative caress of his fingers along her flesh.

  “Obey me, sea witch.” His voice was an implacable command that shivered over her nerves, giving her warmth and the tingle of response he could compel from her with it.

  She growled. Another block of energy would not only knock him from her back—maybe—but also turn the funnel of clouds around them into a full hurricane system. Sam had recently replaced the windows of his trailer. It would really annoy him if she shattered them with an unexpected weather front. That in itself was a temptation.

  There’s my sea witch. Shift, Mina.

  You’ll let me fall.

  I might, just a little. You raked my other leg pretty good on that last spin. It hurts.

  Big baby.

  Her flanks heaved with a tired sigh, and then her body was melting, shrinking, the angles and curves of dragon becoming the angles and curves of a small woman. It didn’t really matter, did it? As he’d said, it was done. She was pregnant, and that couldn’t be undone. Wouldn’t be undone. Not by her.

  He was holding her in his arms, and he didn’t let her fall. Instead, he leaned back, folding his wings beneath them like the overlapped sides of a boat’s hull, carrying them on the air currents like a river. She was coiled up against him the way she sometimes did on their roomy couch at the desert house. He’d lie on his back while reading to her, or sometimes they’d watch TV. She’d be curved half way over his body, feeling quite secure nested in between the sofa back and his strong body. His wing would be tucked around her like a blanket, like now, feathers whispering along her bare flesh, because he liked to be the only thing that kept her warm on such nights. She liked it, too.

  Her gaze fell to his leg, the raw stripe of bloody flesh where she had scored him with her talons. She hadn’t even been aware of it. She wanted to touch it, but she couldn’t. Contact with wounds she’d made in the heat of a Dark One fit could call back that madness too easily. Even now, she had to tear her eyes away from it, swallow back the roiling stir of dark energy. But not being able to ease his pain brought the despair back anew.

  Children got scrapes. Mothers were supposed to kiss the shallow wound and put a colorful Band-Aid on it to make it better. She couldn’t even touch and offer comfort to the male who meant more to
her than anything ever had.

  “Mina.” He held her closer but she shut her eyes. She didn’t want to be told things she knew weren’t true. She just had to accept it, what she’d always known. That he wasn’t hers to keep.

  “What was the song?” she asked before he could say anything more. She could hear the desperation in her voice, the strain.

  “Mina.” His fingers stroked over her hair, that strong, sure touch that so often made her believe he could figure out anything, fix all of it. He couldn’t fix this.

  “Please, tell me.”

  He’d hummed it before, but now he gave her the words. He didn’t have a cultured, smooth singing voice, but there was something very appealing to it, the way he could linger over the notes, infuse each with meaning and feeling. He told her he’d never wanted anyone the way he wanted her. That every breath took him deeper and, when he was with her, time stopped.

  “Madonna. ‘Crazy for You,’” he murmured. “When I was in high school, I thought it was the best song to slow dance with a girl. One of these days, I’m going to take you to a high school dance and slow dance with you.”

  She kept her eyes closed, even as he began to stroke her face, fingertips threading into her hair, slight tugs and releases. The storm was still near, still dense and unsettled, but it was lessening. She knew they were floating down below the cloud cover, dropping back toward earth, for gentle rain pattered against her skin. Dropping her head back, she opened her mouth and took in the rain drops, letting him stroke the hair away from her face.

  “Mina, I won’t let you hurt the baby. Open your eyes. Look at me.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Tough.”

  With a sigh, she opened them and met his warm brown gaze. There were a lot of things in it. A lingering fierceness from their battle in the air, an implacable resolve, and that tender, painful knowledge of her soul that was capable of unraveling her.