Cassandra eyed the corridor. "What is it?"
"A death spell." A vicious gleam filled Surreal's eyes. "First one who walks through that—it'll burst his heart, burst his balls, and finish the kill with a blast of the Gray. The spell gets sucked into the body so there's nothing anyone can trace. I usually add a timing spell to it, but we want to hit them fast and dirty."
Cassandra looked shocked. "Where did you learn to build something like that?"
Surreal shook her head and headed for another corridor to set another trap. This wasn't the time to tell Cassandra that Sadi had taught her that particular little spell. Especially when she kept wishing he'd taught it to Jaenelle.
Daemon slowly opened his eyes.
He knew he was lying on his back. He knew he couldn't move. He also knew he was naked. Why was he naked?
Mist swirled around him, teasing him, offering him no landmarks. Not that he expected to find anything familiar, but even the mind had landmarks. Except this was Jaenelle's mind, not his, in a place too deep for the rest of the Blood to reach.
He remembered feeling a hint of her as he probed the abyss, remembered diving, falling. Shattering.
Something moved in the mist. He heard a quiet clink clink, like glass tapping glass.
He turned his head toward the sound, feeling as if it took all of his strength to do so little.
"Don't move," said a lilting, lyrical voice that also contained caverns and midnight skies.
The mist drew back enough for him to see her standing next to slabs of stone piled up to form a makeshift altar.
Shock rippled through him. The crystal shards on the altar rattled in response.
"Don't move," she said, sounding testy as she carefully fitted another shard of the shattered chalice into place.
It was Jaenelle's voice, but . . .
She was medium height, slender, and fair-skinned. Her gold mane—not quite hair and not quite fur—was brushed up and back from her exotic face and didn't hide the delicately pointed ears. In the center of her forehead was a tiny, spiral horn. A narrow strip of gold fur traced her spine, ending in a small gold and white fawn tail that flicked over her bare buttocks. The legs were human and shapely but changed below the calf. Instead of feet, she had dainty horse's hooves. Her human hands had sheathed claws like a cat's. As she shifted position to slip another shard into place, he saw the small, round breasts, the feminine curve of waist and hips, the dark-gold triangle of hair between her legs.
Who . . . ?
But he knew. Even before she walked over and looked at him, even before he saw the feral intelligence in those ancient, haunted sapphire eyes, he knew.
Terrifying and beautiful. Human and Other. Gentle and violent. Innocent and wise.
"I am Witch," she said, a small, defiant quiver in her voice.
"I know." His voice had a seductive throb in it, a hunger he couldn't control or mask.
She looked at him curiously, then shrugged and returned to the altar. "You shattered the chalice. That's why you can't move yet."
He tried to raise his head and blacked out. By the time he could focus again, she had enough of the chalice pieced together for him to realize it wasn't the same one Tersa had shown him.
"That's not your chalice," he shouted happily, too relieved to care that he'd startled her until she bared her teeth and snarled at him.
"No, you silly stubborn male, it's yours."
That sobered him a little, but her response sounded so much like Jaenelle the child, he didn't care about that either.
Taking it slow, he propped himself up on one elbow. "Then your chalice didn't shatter."
She selected another piece, fit it into place. Her eyes filled with desperation and her voice became too quiet. "It shattered."
Daemon lay down and closed his eyes. It took him a long moment to gather the courage to ask, "Can you repair it?"
She didn't answer.
He drifted after that. Minutes, years, what did it matter? Images swirled behind his closed eyes. Bodies of flesh and bone and blood. Webs that marked the inner boundaries. Crystal chalices that held the mind. Jewels for power. The images swirled and shifted, over and over. When they finally came to rest, they formed the Blood's four-sided triangle. Three sides—body, chalice, and Jewels—surrounding the fourth side, the Self, the spirit that binds the other three.
The images swirled again, became mist. He felt something settle into place inside him as the mist reformed into a crystal chalice, its shattered pieces carefully fitted together. Black mist filled in the cracks between each piece, as well as the places where tiny pieces were missing.
He felt brittle, fragile.
A finger tapped his chest.
A thin skin of black mist coated the chalice, inside and out, forming a delicate shield around it.
The finger tapped again. Harder.
He ignored it.
The next tap had an unsheathed nail at the end of it.
Cursing, he shot up onto his elbows. He forgot what he'd intended to say because she was straddling his thighs and he could have sworn he saw little flashes of lightning deep in her sapphire eyes.
"Snarly male," she said, tapping his chest again. "The chalice is back together, but it's very fragile. It will be strong again if you keep it protected long enough for it to mend. You must take your body to a safe place until the chalice heals."
"I'm not leaving without you."
She shook her head. "The misty place is too dark, too deep for you. You can't stay here."
Daemon bared his teeth. "I'm not leaving without you."
^Stubborn snarly male!"
"I can be as stubborn and as snarly as you."
She stuck her tongue out at him.
He responded in kind.
She blinked, huffed, and then began to laugh.
That silvery, velvet-coated laugh made his heart ache and tremble.
Before, he'd seen Witch beneath the child Jaenelle. Now he saw Jaenelle beneath Witch. Now he saw the difference—and no difference.
She looked at him, her eyes full of gentle sadness. "You have to go back, Daemon."
"So do you," he said quietly.
She shook her head. "The body's dying."
"You could heal it."
She shook her head more violently. "Let it die. Let them have the body. I don't want the body. This is my place now. I can see them all when I stand in this place. All the dreams."
"What dreams?"
"The dreams in the Light. The dreams in the Darkness and the Shadow. All the dreams." She hesitated, looked confused. "You're one of the dreams in the Light. A good dream."
Daemon swallowed hard. Was that how she saw them? As dreams? She was the living myth, dreams made flesh.
Made flesh.
"I'm not a dream, Lady. I'm real."
Her eyes flashed. "What is real?" she demanded. "I see beautiful things, I hear them, I touch them with the body's hand, and they say bad girl to make up stories, those things are not real. I see bad things, cruel things, a twisted darkness that taints the land, a darkness that isn't the Darkness, and they say bad girl to make up stories, bad girl to tell lies. The uncles say no one will believe a sick-mind girl and they laugh and hurt the body so I go away to the misty place to see the gentle ones, the beautiful ones and leave them ice that hurts them when they touch it." She hugged herself and rocked back and forth. "They don't want me. They don't want me. They don't love me."
Daemon wrapped his arms around her and held her close, rocking with her as words kept tumbling out. He listened to the loneliness and confusion. He listened to the horrors of Briarwood. He listened to bits of stories about friends who seemed real but weren't real. He listened and understood what she didn't, what she couldn't.
If she didn't repair her shattered mind, if she didn't link with the body again, if she didn't re-form the four-sided triangle, she would be trapped here, becoming lost and entangled in the shards of herself until she could never find a way to reac
h what she loved most.
"No," he said gently when her words finally stopped, "they don't want you. They don't love you, can't love you. But I do love you. The Priest loves you. The beautiful ones, the gentle ones—they love you. We've waited so long for you to come. We need you with us. We need you to walk among us."
"I don't want the body," she whimpered. "It hurts."
"Not always, sweetheart. Not always. Without the body, how will you hear a bird's song? How will you feel a warm summer rain on your skin? How will you taste nutcakes? How will you walk on a beach at sunset and feel the sand and surf under your . . . hooves?"
He felt her mood lighten before he heard the sniffled giggle. As she raised her head to look at him, her thighs shifted where they straddled him.
A fire sparked in his loins and he stirred.
She leaned back and watched him swell and rise.
He saw innocence in her face, a kitten's curiosity. He saw a female shape that, if not fully mature, was also not a child.
He clenched his teeth and swore silently when she began stroking him lightly.
Stroke. Observe the reaction as if she'd never seen a man become aroused. Stroke. Observe.
He wanted to push her away. He wanted to pull her down on top of him. It was killing him. It was wonderful. As he reached for her hand to stop her, she said in a quiet, wondering voice, "Your maleness has no spines."
Rage froze him. The shards of the chalice rattled as he leashed the fury that had no outlet here. For a moment he tried very, very hard to believe she was comparing him to another species of male, but he knew too much about the twisted males who enjoyed breaking a young, strong witch on her Virgin Night.
Mother Night! No wonder she didn't want to go back. She studied him, puzzled. "Does the body's maleness have spines?"
Daemon swallowed the rage. The Sadist transformed it into deadly silk. "No," he crooned. "My maleness has no spines."
"Soft," she said as she stroked and explored. His hands whispered over her thighs, over her hips. "It could give you pleasure," he crooned softly.
"Pleasure?" Her eyes lit up with curiosity and anticipation.
The childlike trust stabbed him in the heart. She must have sensed some change in him. Before he could stop her, she exploded, kicking his thigh as she leaped away from him. Out of reach, she hugged herself and glared at him.
"You want to mate with the body. Like the others. You want me to make her well so you can put your maleness inside her."
Rage washed through him. "Who is her?" he asked too softly. "Jaenelle." "You're Jaenelle." "I am witch!"
He trembled with the effort not to attack her. "Jaenelle is Witch and Witch is Jaenelle."
"They never want me." She thumped her chest with her fist. "Not me. They don't want me inside the body. They want to mate with Jaenelle, not Witch."
He felt her fragment more and more.
"This is Witch," she screamed at him. "This is who lived inside the body. Do you want to mate with Witch?"
Anger made him lash out. "No, I don't want to mate with you. I want to make love to you."
Whatever she was about to say went unsaid. She stared at him as if he were something unknown. She took a hesitant step toward him.
She'll take the bait, the Sadist whispered inside him. She'll take the bait and step into the pretty trap.
Another step.
Deadly, deadly silk.
Another.
A sweet trap spun from love and lies . . . and truth.
"I've waited seven hundred years for you," he crooned. "For you" His lips curved in a seducer's smile. "I was born to be your lover."
"Lover?"
Almost within reach.
Without his body, the seduction tendrils weren't as potent, but he saw the change in her eyes when they reached her.
Still, she hovered out of reach. "Then why do you want the body?"
"Because that body can sheathe me so that I can give you pleasure." He watched her think about this. "Do you like my body?"
"It's beautiful," she said reluctantly, and then added hurriedly, "but you look the same here. And Witch can sheathe your maleness."
The Sadist held out his hand. "Why don't we find out?"
She took his hand and gracefully settled over him, straddling his thighs. Then she looked at him expectantly.
He smiled at her while his hands explored her, soothing and arousing. When his fingers tickled the underside of her fawn tail, she squeaked and jumped. He resettled her tighter against him, wrapped one arm around her hips to keep her still while his other hand slid through the gold mane and cupped her head. Then he kissed her. A soft kiss. A melting kiss. She sighed when he caressed her breasts. She trembled when he licked the tiny spiral horn. When he was sure she'd taken the bait, he whispered, "Sweetheart, you're right. This place is too dark for me. The chalice is too fragile and I ... I hurt." She looked at him regretfully but nodded.
"Wait," he said when she tried to move away. "Can you come up with me? Up to my inner web?" He licked her ear. His voice became a throbbing purr. "We'd still be safe there."
He leashed the urgency he felt and waited for her answer. There was no way to tell how much time had passed at the Altar, no way to know if their bodies were still there, no way to know if hers still lived, no way to know if those monsters from Briarwood had reached the Sanctuary. No way to know what his body was doing.
He pushed the thought away. He didn't have a link now; the Priest did. Whatever he was doing, it was Saetan's problem.
The rushing ascent caught him by surprise. He grabbed her at the same moment she wrapped her legs around him.
"Lover," she said, smiling at him. Then she giggled.
He wondered if, with a lifetime of wandering in that strange blend of innocence and formidable knowledge, she knew what the word meant.
Doesn't matter, the Sadist whispered. She took the bait.
They rose until they were high in the Black, comfortably above his inner web.
"Better?" she asked shyly.
"Much better," he answered, fitting his mouth to hers.
He kissed her until she relaxed, and then he sighed again.
Hurry, the Sadist whispered.
He leaned his forehead against hers and yelped when the tiny spiral horn jabbed him.
She giggled and kissed his forehead. "Kisses make it better?"
Revulsion swamped him for a moment. That was a child's voice. A young child's voice.
He looked over her shoulder, trying to reconcile the female shape wrapped around him with that voice, and saw fragments of shattered crystal floating through the Black.
Pieces of her. Pieces and pieces of her. Part of her was still intact. Had to be. The part that held the knowledge of the Craft. How could she have put him together otherwise? But if she kept slipping in and out of those fragments . . .
Like Tersa. Worse than Tersa.
"Daemon?"
The midnight voice, with a deadly edge to it.
Remember this side of her, the Sadist warned. Ignore the rest.
Daemon smiled at her. "Lover," he said, nipping her lower lip. Then he used every trick he'd ever learned to sweeten the bait.
But he wouldn't let her raise her hips to sheathe him.
"Still too dark," he gasped when she began to whimper and snarl. "Let's go to the Red. It's my Birthright."
She tried to shake off the seduction tendrils he'd woven around her, but he'd spun his trap well.
"We can have a bed there," he coaxed.
She shuddered. Whimpered. There was no pleasure in the sound.
An image appeared. A bed just big enough for the game. A bed with straps attached to the ends to tie down wrists and ankles.
He dismissed the image and replaced it with his own. A large room with deep, soft carpets. A huge bed, its canopy made of gauze and velvet. Silk sheets and downy covers. Mounds of pillows. The only light came from a slow-burning fire and dozens of scented candles.
Blinded by romance, she sighed and melted against him.
He held the image, teasing, tantalizing as they rose to the Red.
As they settled among the silk and pillows, he tried to reach for some link—his body, the Priest, anything—and choked on frustration. So close. So close and there was nothing for him to tap into to finish it—except the power Jaenelle had shaped around his chalice to hold the pieces together.
Caressing and soothing, loving and lying, he kept her focused on the pleasure while he cautiously sipped the power forming the skin inside the chalice. The skin shrank. The top fragments wobbled but held. Enough.
He reached for Saetan. Found exhaustion and a killing fury.
He struck first. "Hush, Priest." He waited a moment, tapped a little more of the power holding the chalice together. "Use whatever you can now to form a tether. And prepare for a fight. I'm bringing her back."
He reached for his body next. It was still stretched out on the Altar, next to Jaenelle. He strengthened the connection enough so that his body imitated his movements.
Smiling, Daemon slowly rolled on top of her. Gently pinned her hands on either side of her head.
He kissed her, nuzzled her as they rose and rose and rose.
She rubbed against him. "Lover," she whimpered.
"Soon," he lied. "Soon."
Up and up.
He was moments away from slipping back into his body when her eyes widened and she felt the trap spring around her.
"No!" she screamed.
Baring his teeth, he slammed both of them back into their bodies.
Her screams filled the Altar room. Blood gushed between her legs.
"Heal the body, Jaenelle!" Daemon shouted, fighting to keep her connected to her body while she tried to throw him off. "Heal it!"
Her fear pounded against his mind.
"You lied to me. You lied!"
"I would have said anything, done anything to get you back," he roared, his nails digging in to hold her. "Heal it!"
"Letmego letmego letmego."
Bodies fought. Selves fought. As they tangled furiously, he felt Saetan slip the tether around her leg.
One flick of the power within her would tear him apart, would set her free. Instead she begged, pleaded.
Bishop, Anne - Dark Jewels 01 - Daughter of the Blood Page 43
