by M. D. Massey
After I’d shoved a girl’s head in the toilet for telling me to go back to Mexico—the idiot couldn’t tell a European Spanish accent from a North American one—the other students mostly left me alone. However, that experience had taught me that wealth of the type I had enjoyed growing up was the province of a very small minority. I also saw how wealth divided people, how it made people treat you differently.
People assumed things about the wealthy, just as they did about the poor, and that was why I chose to live rather frugally back in Austin. I wondered whether Colin would look at me any differently if he ever saw how I’d grown up. He never would, if I could help it, because it simply wasn’t worth the risk.
“Not a word about any of this to Colin when you get home,” I said.
“My lips are sealed. Nice mansion, by the way.”
“If you mention anything about this to him…”
“Relax, I won’t speak of it. However, if you’re as serious about him as I think you are, don’t you think he’s going to find out about it eventually?”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I’m damned good and ready.” When I pulled into the circular drive, Mom was waiting for us at the front entrance. She wasn’t clairvoyant; she had GPS tracking devices installed on all the vehicles for security reasons. I put the car in park, pausing before I stepped out of the vehicle.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you about Mother,” I said.
“Noted,” the dark wizard replied.
I got out and approached my mother, who stared down at me imperiously. She was a tall, beautiful woman—thin, elegant, and intimidating. I’d inherited my father’s height, unfortunately, and failed to take after her in that regard. Why mother had married such a short man was beyond me, but such was love. I stopped in front of her and clasped my hands behind my back, awaiting questions.
She spoke to me in Spanish, although I doubted that she thought it would provide any privacy around Crowley. She merely did it to be rude. “Did you have any problems from the duende?”
I chose to answer in English. Mother hated when I did that. “A minor scuffle. No one saw, Crowley made certain of that.”
As Crowley joined us, Mother glanced over at him and scowled. “This is the wizard who broke your heart and sullied your reputation?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“And you let him live?”
“I couldn’t exactly murder him over a verbal indiscretion, Mama. My employer frowns on such things.”
“This Cold Iron Circle, they sound much too modern to do the work we do effectively. The mouros do not obey the rules of man. How can we keep them at bay if we choose to do so?” She tsked. “I will never understand why you decided to work for them, instead of taking your rightful place with us.”
“Not now, Mother. We have a guest.”
She spared him a sideways sneer. “Have it your way, mi hija. But I will have words with this one.” She turned to Crowley and addressed him in English. “You insulted my daughter. You hurt her. This, I cannot forgive.”
He pulled his hood back to look her in the eye, revealing his ruined face. “I agree. My actions were reprehensible. I can assure you, I’m a changed man since then—and I would make amends, if possible.”
She smiled like the serpent in the garden. “You’ll have ample opportunity to do so while you’re here, but can you?”
Crowley arched an eyebrow. “Can I…”
“Can you be of use to us, wizard? You do owe my daughter a debt of honor, but can you repay it? You’re mortal, that much is plain—yet there’s something about you, a darkness that clings to you, that is a part of you. This darkness, it is the source of your magic, yes?”
Crowley shrugged.
“A test, then. Yes, that would be best, before I take you to the Anjana. No sense in burdening her with your presence if you’re of no use to her.”
She clapped her hands, and three of my cousins appeared. They’d been hiding behind columns, among the shrubbery, and the like. Mother gestured to the circular grassy area bordered by the driveway.
“Wizard, if you’ll be so kind as to indulge me?”
Crowley looked at me, and I sighed. “I warned you,” I said.
He pulled his hood back up and stepped into the center of the lawn. “I am at your disposal, Señora Becerra.”
Mother called to my cousins, Alicia, Fabiana, and Luna. Each were carbon copies of the others with dark hair and eyes, light olive skin, and a dancer’s muscles. They were all older than me, and fully vested in the powers the Anjana had granted to them. The girls were tall and graceful like Mother, and well-trained like me—but that wasn’t what made them deadly. This would not be a fair fight.
Crowley already knew he was dealing with something supernatural, but the nature of their powers would be a mystery to him. Wisely, he spooled up his power, casting tendrils of shadow magic around him. They whipped and waved in the air in random patterns—a trick he used in combat to cause confusion when faced with multiple opponents.
The girls spread out, then they transformed and attacked.
16
A little secret about me and my family that I hadn’t told anyone—we were shifters. Lamiae, to be exact. Well, all the women in my family were, except me. I chose not to accept the Anjana’s “gift,” which made me a bit of a black sheep among my relatives.
My cousins, however, were full-on snake people. When the girls shifted, it happened in an instant. One minute, Crowley was facing three beautiful, harmless-looking girls, and the next he was facing three were-serpents. Each girl was human from the waist up—naked, no less, as the shift happened magically and not physically—with a giant serpent’s body from the waist down.
Their upper bodies changed as well, but not as drastically. The girls now displayed long upper and lower fangs; their tongues had lengthened and become forked; and their eyes were reptilian rather than human. And, their fingers ended in sharp claws. Fabiana and Luna’s skin was mostly still human, with only the occasional scale showing here and there. But Alicia, the oldest of the three, was more mature in her control of her powers. Her upper body was covered in scales. The scales were protective in nature, and they made it harder to injure her.
Crowley, ever the pragmatist, shot a bolt of shadow magic at the nearest girl to him, Luna. It hit her in the face and stuck like spider-silk, covering her mouth and eyes and obscuring her vision. She screamed in a muffled, frustrated wail, and clawed at the dark mist covering her face, but her efforts had zero effect.
On seeing their companion go down, Fabiana and Alicia attacked simultaneously. A shadow arm shot out and grabbed Fabiana by the throat, wrapping around her neck to hold her several paces away. Crowley did to her what she had intended to do to him, and her face turned red, then purple as he choked her into unconsciousness.
But Alicia had dodged Crowley’s attack, coming in low on her belly in a slithering sprint. She closed the gap and dove at his leg, obviously intending to sink her fangs into his thigh. She wouldn’t inject enough poison to kill him, but only enough to end the fight. Fortunately, Crowley was way too slick for her. Instead of getting a mouthful of flesh, she sunk her fangs into a layer of shadow that had been hovering, almost invisibly, just above his skin.
Fabiana and Luna were on the ground by this time, and Crowley released his magic from them both. In similar fashion, Crowley’s shadow mist crawled its way into Alicia’s mouth and down her throat, where I assumed it was meant to fill her lungs and prevent her from breathing. But she wasn’t going down without a fight. Her tail whipped around and swept Crowley’s legs out from under him, forcing him to use his shadow tentacles to support his weight.
That’s what Alicia wanted. She was crafty, that girl, and calm under pressure. Even as she fought for breath, she was planning how to eke out victory. With his shadow limbs preoccupied, Alicia was able to whip her tail around and wrap it around the wizard’s torso. Then, she squeezed.
Crowley’s magic wavered and weakened,
and every tendril of magic but the one attached to Alicia’s mouth disappeared. As my cousin did her best to crush the life out of the wizard, he remained focused on maintaining that single shred of his magic to smother her. What it boiled down to now was a battle of wills.
I checked my watch. Fifteen seconds passed, then thirty seconds, then forty-five. Alicia was squeezing Crowley hard enough to crush his ribs, and I was certain she would have, if he hadn’t been intervening with his magic. His hood had fallen away from his face, and his mouth worked like a fish out of water, desperately attempting to force air into his lungs. Still, he persisted.
Likewise, Alicia’s jaws were stretched wide by Crowley’s magic, and her eyes bulged from her head. Her face was distorted and discolored, and tears ran from her eyes. They would kill each other before either gave up the fight.
“Mama, enough…” I began to say, but she silenced me with a single raised finger.
Mother never took her eyes off them, intent on seeing who would be the victor. Finally, after ninety seconds had passed, she snapped her fingers. “Alicia, enough.”
Alicia continued to squeeze.
“I said enough!” Mother’s voice rumbled with authority. She was not one to be trifled with, and my cousin knew it. Her eyes shot back and forth between Crowley and Mother, then she relented, releasing the wizard. He withdrew his magic, and the two fell gasping on the ground next to one another.
Mother turned to me. “When he’s recovered, you’re to take him to the Anjana immediately. She’s already informed me that he’ll be instrumental in helping us wrest control of the Piscina de Cristal from the mouros.”
Mother strode off into the house, leaving me to handle the fallout from the short battle that had taken place. Fabiana and Luna had recovered and switched back to their human shapes, while Alicia had chosen to remain in her were-serpent form. She pushed herself off the ground, coiling to attack Crowley again. He was still gasping on the ground, and in no shape to defend himself.
I pulled a .44 magnum revolver from beneath my jacket and cocked the hammer as I pointed it at her. “Don’t even think about it, Alicia.”
She turned her serpent’s eyes on me and smiled. “Relax, prima. I was only going to give him a little love bite—something to remember me by.”
“Back away, Alicia. Mother says the Anjana needs him.”
Alicia turned back toward Crowley. “Then she can heal him.”
I fired the pistol at the ground next to her coiled snake body. “The next one goes in your gut. Then you’ll be the one asking the Anjana to heal you.”
She swiveled to face me again and narrowed her eyes. “Fine. But point a gun at me again, and I’ll make you eat it.”
I kept the gun on her, watching her like a hawk until she transformed back into her human form and walked away with Fabiana and Luna tagging along behind her.
After they were gone, I holstered the pistol and helped Crowley sit up.
“Is that how your mother always greets guests?” he croaked.
“Only the ones who break her daughter’s heart.”
He felt his ribs and winced. “I swear on my scars, I’ll never do that again.”
17
Crowley stood statue still as I wrapped his bruised ribs. He’d initially told me he didn’t need first aid, until I’d pointed out that the bandages would support his ribs until his magic healed him. Finally, he reluctantly agreed, the silly male that he was. Men and their egos…
He took a selfie of me bandaging him, for what reason I had no idea. I had to admit, I was impressed that he didn’t flinch once, because he’d used to be a big baby. I guess getting half his face burned off had taught him something about dealing with pain.
“What’s this ‘crystal pool’ your mother spoke of?” he asked as I applied the last piece of kinesio tape to his ribs.
“The Piscina de Cristal is the source of the mouros’ power now. It’s a power sink that gathers and stores magic from nature. Whether they stumbled across it ages ago, or if they created it themselves, no one can say—not even the Anjana. Since she’s cut off from Underhill right now, her magical reserves are low.”
As he pulled his shirt down, I admired his abs on the sly. One thing was for certain, his body wasn’t scarred… not in the slightest.
“I take it the Anjana sees the pool as a vital resource that will assure her continued existence?”
“And ours. The Ojáncanu and his forces could storm right out of the caverns and steamroll us if they wanted. Granted, my mother and the rest of the women in my family are powerful shifters, but we’re outnumbered. Without the Anjana’s magic backing us up, we’ll be toast.”
The dark wizard hopped off the table. “Thus, the reason why the Anjana thinks I’ll be useful in gaining control of this magical well. You need a magic wielder to even the odds.”
“Exactly. And, since you conveniently decided to come looking for me, you got volunteered for the mission… the details of which we’ll get from the Anjana.”
Crowley seemed to consider this for a moment, although it was difficult to tell what his face was doing inside that cowl. But I had been his working partner at the Circle for months, and his lover for a short time. I knew from his body language what he was thinking.
“You’re suspicious,” I said.
“Of many things… but in particular, of your family situation, your strained relationship with your mother, of how that impacts your relationship to this Anjana you speak of, and whether she is manipulating you to her own ends.”
Leave it to a man to state the obvious and make it seem like keen insight. “She’s fae, Crowley—so of course she’s manipulating me. Spanish fae, but fae just the same. And as for your next question—what she wants from me? I think you can guess based on what you’ve seen today.”
“Hmmm. I take it that you want to refuse the Anjana’s ‘gift’ of serpenthropy. And she wants to trick you into accepting it, thus binding you to her service.” He paused, tapping a finger on his chin. “Belladonna, why have I not seen any men around here, in your family’s compound?”
“I was wondering when you’d get around to asking about that. That’s one of the reasons I don’t want to commit myself to the Anjana’s cause. My family is fiercely matriarchal—so much so that we never marry, and we don’t enter into long-term relationships with men.”
“With men, you say?” he remarked, with unveiled amusement in his voice.
“You just couldn’t leave that one alone, could you, Crowley? Wipe those fantasies from your mind, pig, because I’m not gay. However, several of the women in my family are, just so you know. Anyway, we live like Amazons. We mate to breed, and that’s about it.”
“Uh-huh. So, I was just supposed to be a fling?”
“I’m not having that discussion with you right now.” Mostly because I’d only dated Crowley to make Colin jealous. It had still hurt when he’d betrayed me, but that was water under the bridge. “Set your man-brain aside, and let’s stay on task. The Anjana is going to ask us to do the impossible, which is par for the course with the fae. She needs your help to complete this mission, which means she needs me to guide you. That should provide us with some leverage when we negotiate with her.”
“Ah, you intend to cut a deal for your freedom.”
I pursed my lips and nodded. “Yep. She’s more vulnerable now than ever, and I may not have a chance to bargain with her again. This is my opportunity to be rid of any obligations to her that I inherited, once and for all.”
“I suppose I can see how you’d want to be free from”—he gestured expansively—“all of this.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“Not at all,” he said as he wagged a finger at me. Crowley could be so condescending. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, Belladonna, but you’re simply not cut out for a life of celibacy and service. You’re way too headstrong. And… amorous, if that’s the right word.”
I exhaled heavily and rolled my eyes.
He was really asking for a punch to the throat. “You do realize you’re walking on thin ice right now?”
“I do, but before I embark on yet another impossible quest for the fae on behalf of a friend, I’d simply like to be crystal-clear as to your motives.”
“My motives are simple. Number one, make sure that my family isn’t forced from their ancestral home by the Ojáncanu and his mouros. And second, I hope to make the Anjana so indebted to me that she agrees to let me do as I please.”
“A question… why don’t you just go back to the States? Surely her reach doesn’t extend halfway around the world.”
I carefully considered how to answer him, and decided that if he was voluntarily getting mixed up in my troubles, he deserved the truth. “Part of it has to do with family and obligation,” I said. “But mostly I’m doing this out of self-preservation.”
“Come again?”
“Crowley, throughout the years, any member of my family who reneged on their obligation to the Anjana was hunted down by the rest of the clan and killed.”
“Without exception?”
I nodded. “So, are you in, or out?”
“When you put it that way… when do we leave?”
18
A well-worn path led from our villa up into the foothills. Crowley and I walked the trail, along with an escort that consisted of Fabiana and another of my cousins, Julieta. Julieta had still been a kid when I’d left, a fourteen-year-old beanpole with a wicked spin kick and a gap between her top front teeth. At seventeen and fresh out of braces, she was a raven-haired knockout—in more ways than one.
Mother had insisted on the escort. After the incident at the airport, she feared that the duende and mouros were getting bolder, and that they might even attempt to attack us openly in our territory. Thankfully, Alicia wanted nothing to do with us, so she’d stayed back at the villa with the rest of the clan. As we ascended the path to the Anjana’s home, the girls peppered Crowley with questions.
