by Evans, Misty
My dead weight tumbled and I cartwheeled through the air. Spinning like a top, I became entangled in a magical tornado. I spun. I flipped. I fell.
Strong, unseen hands caught me and extracted me from the swirling force. I opened my eyes to find Luc holding me, his dark hair falling over his shoulders and his eyes once again vulnerable. He was no longer glowing or shimmering, but there was enough heat coming from his body, I flushed all over from our skin to skin contact.
One of his fingers skimmed my bangs out of my eyes. He glanced at the sigil on my forehead. “Did the Mark do that?”
I wasn’t exactly sure what that was and all I wanted to do was curl up in his arms. My voice came out soft and slow, like I was drugged. Maybe I was. “Do…what?”
He raised his gaze to the other angels.
From my position in Luc’s arms, I couldn’t see their response, but Z’s voice was clear enough. “Had to be you, boss. It wasn’t the Mark.”
Luc lifted one elegant brow, a silent command for Z to explain.
A heavy sigh and a pregnant pause followed. I shifted slightly so I could see Z out of the corner of my eye. He raised the hand that was tattooed with the familiar looking sigil. “I reversed the Mark’s effects when I held her hand by the pit.”
A muscle jumped in Luc’s jaw. It was a fine jaw and my gaze traced over the strong line. “You used your curse on her?”
Z glanced at Cephiel, back to Luc. “How else could we keep the Mark from backfiring? It wasn’t like you were here to close the gates of purgatory.”
The muscle jumped again, but Luc dropped his attention to the floor. “How much time do we have?”
“Five minutes? Five hours?” Zayfeer shrugged. “I’ve never used it on another Fallen before.”
Fallen? My ears rang. Maybe I’d misheard him, but I could definitely feel an unknown danger hanging in the air. I caught Luc’s chin and forced him to look at me. “What curse? How much time until what?”
He set me on my feet, took my hand. “Let’s go upstairs.”
Cephiel stepped forward. “I don’t believe that’s a good idea.”
“Shut up, priest.”
The hole was closed, but the shop was still a disaster. Mikayla frowned as I followed Luc past her on our way to the back stairs that led to my apartment. “Will someone tell me what’s going on?”
“Luc,” Zayfeer called from behind us. “I have to agree with Ceph on this one. Not a good idea, my friend. If it wears off at the wrong moment, you could, uh, lose some important…body parts.”
Luc hesitated in the doorway. Looked over his shoulder at the angel. “We were never friends, Xavier, and we never will be.”
A minute later, Luc and I stood in my living room. The damage to the floor had disappeared just like it had in the shop. Cain flew out of the kitchen mewing a hello and Luc patted him on the head.
Then, without a word, the Devil drew me into my bedroom.
Chapter Eight – More Than A Feeling
A new wave of lust and heat hit me full force as Luc and I faced each other, him still beautiful and naked, and me covered in black tarry demon blood and green goo, my hair a tangled mess and my legs shaking.
His eyes…there was that look again. A vulnerability I’d never seen before and one that made me nervous. “What’s wrong? What were you and Zayfeer talking about downstairs?”
“Sshh.” Luc touched my shirt and it dissolved. Just bam, no more shirt. Sort of handy. A flick of his fingers and my jeans dissolved into a pile at my feet. “We don’t have much time.”
“I don’t understand.”
His attention zeroed in on my mismatched bra and panties. The bra was a bright lemon yellow and the panties had a cartoon cat on them wearing a witch hat. Another touch of his magical fingers and my bra dropped to the floor. His gaze locked on mine; he drew his knuckles across one exposed nipple. “I don’t have time to explain everything.”
He inched closer, our bodies a fraction of an inch from touching. Even so, his magic licked over my skin, letting me know exactly what he planned to do to me. “You’re going to have to trust me.”
In case your mother never warned you, trusting the Devil is akin to selling him your soul. I’d done that once—given him my soul—and it was just as bad an idea the second time around as it had been the first.
Since joining Witches Anonymous, I’d been working on making better choices. Trying hard to stay away from people and situations that made recovery from my wicked ways impossible.
But I couldn’t stay away from Luc. He was the one drug I would never get out of my magical system, no matter how long I stayed clean.
Leaning forward, I kissed his lips, then stood my ground as I searched his face for any sign of deceit. None existed. “I trust you.”
He pulled me down on the bed so I straddled his thighs. I sank my hands in his thick, long hair and he drew the breast he had teased with his knuckles into his mouth. I arched into him and his thighs spread mine farther apart. I still wore my cat panties, but amazingly, the crotch disappeared as Luc’s fingers touched the silky fabric and slid home.
My magic sang with happiness as Luc’s magic teased and flirted the same way his fingers were doing. He kissed and stroked and suckled until I was trembling with a craving so desperate, so dark, I lowered the prison bars keeping my magic at bay. Out came my magic in a rush of freedom, wrapping itself around him, melding and blending with his. I didn’t use it, just let it feed him.
The high was too good. I didn’t give the Mark a second thought as I shifted and took Luc into my body.
For the first time in a year, I was joined with Lucifer in a dance that knew no bounds. We were free, our bodies, souls and magics merging into one. It was a dance neither of us had forgotten. A dance our magics gloried in as much as our bodies did.
My breath came in ragged gasps as I moved over him, taking him in, withdrawing, taking him again. He buried his face in my breasts and ran his hands over my skin, touching, teasing, gripping.
Heat and light engulfed me. Luc’s lips and hands urged me on, his ardor matching mine. As the first wave hit, I arched into him again, clutching his shoulders and riding it, letting the dance carry me away.
He shuddered, a shockwave of his magic lifting me higher. The wave crested, rising hard and fast. I cried out his name.
In the next instant, release. Sweet, sweet release…
Chapter Nine – Out Of the Cauldron…And Into the Fire
In the aftermath, I drifted, riding a gentle ocean wave of satisfaction and nerve-tingling wonder.
Man, I had missed this. Not just the sex, but the after-sex magical high. My body vibrated, and, even though I hadn’t used my magic, the place next to my heart hummed.
An ex-witch, good or not, could get used to this.
A light flashed on the back of my eyelids and the air around me shifted from warm and cozy to freezing cold. I started to open my eyes when I felt myself moving backwards. Fast.
Had Luc dumped me off the bed? No. I wasn’t falling. More like I was being suctioned down a long tunnel. Pressure hit me from all sides, immobilizing my limbs. I couldn’t even turn my head. Tiny pinpricks of pain assaulted my skin, but when I tried to force my eyes open and cry out, I could do neither.
For a moment, my entire body felt like it was being shoved through a sieve and turned inside out. My lungs refused to draw oxygen. The next moment, I slammed to a stop.
Woozy and nauseated, I cracked open my eyelids. I was standing on a deserted street, a long crimson robe covering me from neck to feet. There were no people, no cars, not even a bird in sight. No noise either.
I patted the robe. No pockets. Which meant, no Dove chocolates hidden inside.
Damn, Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.
The barren landscape was a monotone gray, matching the overcast sky. A thick fog hung in the distance.
But this place was familiar. The street, the buildings…I glanced over my right shou
lder and there was Evie’s Ice Cream shop. A glance over my left showed me the rest of Eden’s downtown. The snow was absent but the air was cold. My bare feet stung from the frosty sidewalk and I shifted my weight from one foot to the other.
My magic thudded uncomfortably. Took me a minute to realize my heart wasn’t returning the favor. No beat, no pulse, nothing.
Instinctively, I took a deep breath and found my lungs expanded but did not draw air.
Don’t panic. This had to be a dream. I’d fallen asleep after the rigorous love-making and now I was in LaLa Land.
Instinctively, I reached once more for a Dove. Nada.
Who makes clothes without pockets for hiding chocolate? Seriously.
I turned in a full circle, wondering why I felt so awake if this was a dream. Must have been courtesy of my stress level. Keeping such a tight rein on my magic and my sex life for so long had created a weird side effect.
Walking over to the shop, I frowned as I noticed how empty it was. The signs in the window were there, but the interior was bare. No booths or tables. No ice cream freezers or cash register. The windows of the neighboring businesses were the same. All of Eden’s downtown was just a shell. Like a movie set that had served its purpose and then been stripped.
Deserted movie set or deserted town, neither was good. Keisha and I were always watching the latest horror movie and making fun of it, but secretly, those awful things scared the bejesus out of me. As my magic continued doing ninety in my chest, I kept an eye out for any crazy, chainsaw-wielding maniac I was sure would come out of nowhere to turn this dream into a bona fide nightmare.
Returning to Evie’s, I started to open the shop’s front door when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Movement at the end of the street where the fog obscured the view. A flash of light and a flicker of gold.
Deep, repetitive vibrations ran up the sidewalk under my feet, thud…thud…thud. The buildings shook from the force.
Great. Not only had I dreamed myself into a horror nightmare with a creepy deserted town and possible chainsaw murderer, I’d invited Godzilla as well.
I always rolled my eyes when the innocent heroine in the movie ends up alone in the woods or an empty alley and the first thing she does is yell, “Hello. Who’s there?” Funny, though. My first instinct was to do exactly that.
Pressing my lips together, I pinched myself in an effort to wake up. Nothing happened.
I squinted at the fog. More flashes of light. More sparks of gold. Angry lightning danced in the clouds overhead. I bit my lips and the pinching continued at a more frantic pace.
Whatever it was, it was getting closer and neither my brain nor my magic was happy about that. Even though I technically didn’t seem to need to draw air in and out of my lungs, my chest heaved as I rattled the doorknob of my shop. Of course, just like in the horror movies, it was locked.
Running down the block, I discovered the same was true for every shop. The alley between Evie’s and my neighbor’s building beckoned to me. It seemed like the only hiding place.
“Don’t go in the creepy alley, Amy,” I commanded, even as my feet moved of their own accord.
A thick fog met me at the entrance. Like the tendrils of magic that had snaked out of the pit in my shop reaching for Luc, these twined around my ankles, massaging their way up my calves. A shiver of revulsion ran over me. At the same time, my magic reached out a hand.
Wake up! I smacked my fist into the bricks of the building. Pain shot up my arm and my knuckles bled, but nothing changed. Once more I had that nagging feeling this was no dream.
Fine. I wheeled around to face whatever was coming. I’d gone head-to-head with Lilith, queen of Hell and lived to tell the story. Godzilla and chainsaw massacres were small potatoes compared to that bitch.
The figure that emerged from the fog was neither a T-Rex on steroids nor a Hollywood movie monster. He was an angel, thirty foot tall and dripping gold from the crown on his head to the hilt of the sword in his hand. The blade of the sword looked like crystal, shimmering and giving off light that burned from within.
Greaaat. My favorite. A self-righteous angel with a bee up his butt.
The angel’s eyes blazed an unnatural orange, as if reflecting fire. The tips of his wings were tinged with the same color. He towered as tall as some of the buildings, slicing at those in his way as he stalked me. The sword destroyed brick and wood, mortar and metal, as it left a trail of fire in its wake.
So need to wake up now.
The angel let loose a mighty roar, deafening me and uprooting those buildings still standing. Clamping my hands over my ears, I sprinted across the street, dodging falling debris and raining fire as I headed for the courthouse.
Except it was no longer the courthouse in the center of Eden’s downtown square. The neoclassical structure that mimicked the U.S. Capitol Building in D.C. had morphed into the gothic edifice of Immaculate Conception—the church where Cephiel played priest.
Pure instinct drove me, nothing else. If the shops on my street were locked, I had no reason to believe the church was any different. The pounding magic inside my chest trumped logic and spurred me on anyway. As I ran, I kept my eyes on the church’s front doors situated at the top of a set of wide stairs. The fog around the perimeter of the square swam toward me, blurring my vision until I thought I saw the figure of a woman standing on those stairs.
Her back was to me and she wore a long, flowing cloak like mine that painted the concrete steps a dark blood red behind her. As if she felt my stare, she turned her head to look over her shoulder. Our eyes met, locking on one another. My pulse skipped.
“Mom?” I whispered.
Her lips formed a tremulous smile…or maybe that was my imagination…and then the angel’s voice roared through the square again and she crumpled on the steps, disappearing inside her cloak.
Adrenaline rippled down my legs. I pumped my arms and shot across the street. I don’t know how I knew that was my mother—she’d left Emilia and I right after I was born and all I ever had was a single snapshot of her—but I knew it was her, just like I knew this was no simple dream.
No longer whispering, I shouted, “Mom!”
I hit the narrow stairs and tripped, pitching forward and scraping my hands and knees on the concrete. Scrambling up, I ignored the sting of the wounds and ran hunched over toward the cloak.
The instant I touched it, the material turned to blood, running down the steps and dissolving into the concrete. I pounded the concrete until that damned angel yelled something—he wasn’t actually yelling, but he was so big, his voice was way too loud—and the stairs under my feet became a solid plane. A slippery, very steep solid plane.
My feet slid out from under me, arms and legs pinwheeling. I ended up on my back, skidding down, down, down to an ungraceful halt at the feet of the golden angel and his fiery sword.
His orange eyes burned with hatred. He raised the sword over his head, the sharp, crystalline point aimed at my heart. An evil grin split his monstrous face and his wings spread wide. “Suffer not the witch,” he snarled.
I slammed my eyelids shut and waited to feel the Mark of Cain come to life.
Only it didn’t.
No heat. No flare of godly light. Just me.
So I tensed for the blow that was coming. Dream or no dream, dying by fiery sword was a hell of a way to go.
Wake up, wake up, wake up.
Dark energy exploded inside my chest. From the tip of my head to the bottom of my feet, it took hold, strengthening my defenses. My magic heaved a sigh and my eyes snapped open to meet the angel’s glare.
His grin widened at the challenge he saw in my eyes right before the sword plunged straight at my heart.
Chapter Ten – An Amy By Any Other Name
The sword wasn’t just aimed at my heart. It was aimed at my magic.
Stop.
A single word, nothing more than a thought, echoed in my head. I must have said it out loud, because it also e
choed through the square.
The sword came to a halt.
The angel’s orange eyes blazed with hatred. His muscles strained as he tried to break through the magic suspending the sword over my chest. The tips of his wings grew longer, quivering with agitation and dripping orange acid that sizzled and blackened everything it landed on.
“Cursed be Amo,” he snarled, his voice loud and sharp as it hit the church’s steeple and bounced back.
Amo? “It’s Amy, nitwit. Amy Atwood. If you’re going to kill someone, at least get their name right.”
He could have lifted one massive foot and squashed me like an ant, but he seemed determined to spear me instead. Another surge of strength rocked the sword. Sparks flew from the crystal blade, reminding me of July 4th sparklers. The searing orange embers burned through the material of my red robe and branded my skin.
In response, the dark energy flooding my body rushed forward to meet his renewed attack. Once more, a single word entered my mind.
Leave.
The light inside the sword flashed bright enough to blind me, and a heartbeat later, there was the sound of an implosion. The energy inside me quieted instantly and I peeked through my eyelashes to see nothing but destroyed buildings and a few sizzling piles of debris.
Going through the motion of heaving a deep sigh—satisfying, I must say, whether you actually draw oxygen or not—I sat up, propped my elbows on my knees and scrubbed a hand over my face. I kept an eye on the horizon where the fog was dense and cocked my head so I could listen closely.
Definitive silence met my ears. Nothing moved outside of the swirling fog. My taut muscles relaxed a fraction and I wondered what to do next.
Clap, clap, clap.
The sound, coming from behind me, broke the silence. I scrambled to my feet, whirling around to face whoever it was.
Zayfeer stood at the top of Immaculate Conception’s steps, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he clapped. He took it out and blew a smoke ring into the air. “That was some cool-ass shit there, Amo.”
