“No,” she said slowly.
Focus! “Then what?”
“Schema. Have to …” her lips moved then she sighed and fell into a healing sleep.
Schema? Like a diagram of something? He looked at the witch sleeping, and his chest expanded with protectiveness, but only because he knew what his brother would do to her if he got to her. Had to be. It was up to Key to make her safe.
He’d start with tracking Mack Daemon.
Key pulled out the passkey he’d gotten from the maid with a little memory-shifting. Sutton West, another Wing Slayer Hunter who was their computer expert, had located Mack Daemon staying in the hotel. Slipping the card into the lock, Key went into the room.
It was dark and quiet, just the air conditioner humming. Silently, he checked the bathroom on his left and found it empty. With his hunter vision, he could see the room perfectly well. There was a sitting area and desk on the right, a bed in the middle of the room against the bathroom wall, a small table and chairs, and a dresser and TV to the left.
But no Mack. Key took out his BlackBerry and checked on Roxy. He’d left her asleep in his room, with his laptop camera on her. She should be safe, but if something happened, he’d get to her. Satisfied that she was still asleep, he began searching the room and quickly went through the drawers; he found cameras and a laptop, but so far, nothing to link him to Liam or find where he was.
He took out the laptop, set it on the bed and booted it up. Into his headset, he said, “Sutton, I’m disabling the firewall, can you hack in?”
“Can you draw?” Sutton replied, and then gave him directions to type into his browser.
“I’m in. What’s your witch’s name?”
She wasn’t his witch. “Roxy. Roxanne Banfield.”
The cursor on the laptop was moving by itself; pages were opening and closing. It was strange to watch. “Also look for Liam DeMicca.”
“Your brother?” Sutton asked. “Thought he was dead.”
“He looked alive when I saw him earlier.”
“Unexpected family reunion,” Sutton muttered, then went on, “He’s added to the search. Carla is looking for information about latent witches.”
“Good, thanks.” Key did a second search of the room. He found a file of papers, airline tickets, hotel receipts, paperwork on the conference, nothing on Roxy or Liam.
“Got something.”
He shot across the room. “Liam?”
“No, a file for Roxanne Banfield, in the folder Witch Mark.”
Key checked his BlackBerry again and Roxy was fine. He shifted his gaze to the computer screen as the pixels formed into a picture. It was a strange marking on delicate creamy skin, with a curve that would fit his palm. He could almost feel the softness, wanted to feel—“Shit, that’s her thigh!” The inside of her thigh. Did Roxy know someone had taken that picture? He didn’t like the idea of someone else that close to her inner thigh …
Forget it! Focus on the marking, not her thigh. “It’s almost the color of clay bleached out by the sun … very light tan pink.” Now that he was concentrating, he could see that it was in the shape of a goddess symbol, about two inches high, with her arms stretched up and her body clearly female. Like a fading sketch. “Schema.” That’s what she had called the picture Mack took. “Sutton, ask Carla what a schema is to witches.”
“On it.”
When he’d been drawing the wall-woman, he hadn’t been able to see the marking. She’d turned her thigh, covering her mound, and that had pissed him off. He had wanted to see her, wanted to know every inch of her. But the way she’d stood, shielding herself not just from modesty, but hiding that marking … it twisted inside him. As if that mark connected them.
The skin beneath his dragon tat stretched and pulled.
“Key?” The voice of Sutton’s mate, Dr. Carla Fisk, came over his headset. Sutton must have patched her through.
“Yeah, what do you have?”
“Schema is a representation of the true self.” Carla’s voice was fascinated. “It only happens with one kind of power that I know of—fertility witches.”
Fertility witches! They were the single type of witch he distrusted. They screwed with nature and created monsters.
Like him.
Revulsion tried to shudder through him, but he repressed it. “So Roxy’s a fertility witch. What does that mean? Her power is flat.”
“I don’t know much more. Fertility witches have always been shrouded in secrecy. I do know why you’re not feeling her power; their magic is latent until they come into their power. Since their gift is sex magic, that’s a good thing. I think that happens around their twenties, but that’s about all I know.”
Sutton broke in. “There’s a picture and description of Roxy in that file. But there are files of other witches with partial marks in the folder.”
He looked at the laptop and saw five witches, each with a schema on different parts of their bodies, and in different stages. Two were brightly colored like a tattoo. All of those were just half of the goddess mark, not the fully formed one like Roxy’s was. “What does it mean that Roxy has the full mark?”
“I’m not sure,” Carla said. “I’ll try to find out, but right now I’m checking on these five witches to see—Oh Ancestors! All five of them have been killed.” She took a loud breath. “Someone is targeting fertility witches.”
“The last file,” Sutton said slowly, “is full of directions on how to disable the witch’s power by cutting her, using a stun gun, etcetera. There’s a number to call for sightings, directions, capture, and delivery.”
Key scanned the file, his stomach churning with a potent combination of disgust, outrage, and just enough of the darker craving to have those witches. You have a witch in your room, that seductively cool voice whispered while his veins swelled for the feel of witch blood. Hating that part of himself, he said, “I’ll call the number.”
“Wait, I want to trace it,” Sutton said. “Okay, go.”
Key switched lines on his BlackBerry and dialed. Waited through the rings and forced himself to breathe. Finally it went to voice mail, three words: “Leave a message.”
At the sound of Liam’s voice, adrenaline dumped into his bloodstream, and his head pounded with renewed fury that he’d failed to killed Liam. He locked his jaw and disconnected. Switching lines, he said, “Voice mail.” He heard his jaw crack with stress. “It’s my brother, Liam.” Thinking fast, he added, “Mack’s a mortal, and I saw that his memory has been shifted by a witch hunter before. Liam must be recruiting mortal men to find these marks on women.”
“I’m sure you’re reeling that your brother is alive, but do you know what he wants with fertility witches specifically?”
“No, but I’m going to find out. He’s after more than these witches, that much I do know.” Remembering Roxy in his room, he shifted screens on his BlackBerry as he finished his thought, “Liam is after—Oh shit!”
The bed was empty. Roxy was gone.
* * *
Key was furious with himself for getting so distracted by the schemas and learning that Roxy was a fertility witch that he hadn’t seen her leave. He’d had to replay it to see when she woke, got out of bed, grabbed her clothes, and left.
He could not believe how his night kept going from bad to worse. Phoenix and Ailish arrived—Phoenix must have broken the land-speed records in his Mustang to get to Vegas so quickly—and now they both stared at the wall where he’d drawn Roxy.
Phoenix wore his customary leathers, and his dark eyes were troubled. “You left her in here with this?”
“She was practically unconscious.” Key went to the minibar, pulled out a too-damned-small bottle of Scotch and drained it.
Ailish, Phoenix’s soul-mirror mate, stood next to him. Her hair was getting longer, now past her shoulders. Dressed in a black camisole, skinny jeans, and boots, she wasn’t looking at the drawing; she wasn’t looking at anything. She said, “Damn, Key, that picture gives me the cre
eps and I’m blind. Mind if I get rid of it?”
The soul-mirror bond that ended the curse for them also allowed Ailish to see through Phoenix’s eyes. It’d been too much to hope that Phoenix wouldn’t show her. He didn’t like them seeing Roxy naked or cut, but he was the asshole who had left it on the wall. More guilt. “Go ahead.”
He felt Ailish’s magic rise in the room, then as he watched, the drawing faded from the wall until it was just a memory.
Phoenix strode over to Key. “You can’t find Roxy anywhere?”
“She’s not in her room.” Frustration burned in his gut. The dragon tat on his chest shifted, too. “If Liam has her …” He couldn’t stand still. He hated feeling helpless.
From his laptop, Sutton’s voice came out, “I found her with the cameras in the hotel hallways. She’s safe. I’ll show you the feed.”
Key turned to the laptop and watched as the images began. Roxy, still wearing the robe and carrying her clothes and shoes, knocked on the door of a room. A woman opened it, stood back as Roxy walked in, then closed the door.
“I know her, that’s Meryl Chambers, she’s a bookseller.” Relief eased his knotted muscles.
Sutton said, “The door has stayed closed. We’ll watch the camera and make sure no one goes in or out. Even better, I think I can code the computer in the door lock to alert me if anyone goes in or out. Even if a rogue is invisible, the door will still alert me.”
Thankful for Sutton’s incredible computer wizardry, he said, “Okay, good.” He leaned against the dresser while Ailish and Phoenix walked over to the couch and sat down.
“Key,” the voice of Axel Locke, the leader of the Wing Slayer Hunters, came over the laptop. “Sutton has filled me in so far, but we need more information. Start at the beginning.”
He turned his head, seeing the green eyes and hard face of his leader on the screen. Key, Phoenix, Sutton, and Axel and another hunter named Ram had decided to commit themselves to their god, Wing Slayer. To show their allegiance, they each had a tattoo of a winged creature. Key did the tattoos, but when he’d inked the raven Axel asked for, it had magically changed into a hawk—the sign that Wing Slayer had chosen him as the leader.
Key felt the weight of the dragon inked on his chest. “I don’t know what Liam’s doing with fertility witches, but I know one thing he wants—the Dragon Tear. It’s supposed to be the last in existence, and it’s full of powerful dragon magic. My mother was an archaeologist and found it. After that, she wore it to keep my father, Liam, or anyone from getting it. She said it had the power to strip immortality from other dragons and make them mortal. It can also strip a god of immortality.”
“A god-killer,” Sutton said. “I’ve heard rumors, but I didn’t believe it.”
“Believe it,” Key said. “It killed my mother. She wore the Tear and died of old age at thirty-nine.” Bitterness roiled in him. “It was completely irrational—she could see she was getting older at an accelerated pace, but she wouldn’t take it off. And that was only wearing the Tear as a necklace. Imagine if it was broken open, what the essence of it could do?” That was half the reason he’d kept his father, uncle, and Liam from getting it. The other half was pure spite. They wanted it, had tortured him to get it. He’d never let that happen.
“The Tear is dangerous. If Asmodeus got ahold of it, he could strip Wing Slayer’s immortality and then kill him,” Axel said. “Wing Slayer is just regaining his god-power to fight the demon since the curse.”
Key nodded. Wing Slayer was half god and half demon. He’d created the Wing Slayer Hunters and needed their complete faith in order to invoke his god-power. That was, and always had been, the one ironclad rule of the witch hunters: Never deny or renounce their god. Everything had been fine for centuries until three decades ago one hunter, Quinn Young, rejected Wing Slayer. That had been the loophole that Asmodeus and his demon witches needed to cast the curse and break the bond between the god and his witch hunters. “I have the Tear hidden, Axel. It’s in Glassbreakers, not here. So what drew Liam here?”
“You think it’s the witch, Roxy?”
Key nodded. “But I can’t figure out why. Her power barely registers with me.”
“Okay, the Tear is safe for now,” Axel said. “You need to protect the witch and find and kill Liam.”
Key shoved off the dresser. “Going out now. He’s got to be in Vegas somewhere.”
Phoenix stood. “We’re going with you.”
Key stiffened. “No. You need to stay here and protect Roxy.”
Visible tension radiated through Phoenix, lifting his shoulders as he leaned forward. “I swore I’d always have your back. That doesn’t change because I’m mated.” He ground his jaw and repeated. “That doesn’t change—ever.”
Ailish stood up and put her hand on Phoenix’s shoulder and added, “Except now, you get a two-for-one deal.”
Phoenix added, “I saw that drawing.” He lifted his hand toward the wall. “That’s your frenzied shit. What if it happens while you’re out hunting? I’m not letting Liam or anyone get the drop on you.”
Phoenix knew Key better than anyone alive. After his mother died when he was thirteen, Key had taken the Tear and run away. Shortly after that he’d met Phoenix; they survived the streets together and that made them brothers in every way but DNA. He knew Phoenix’s stubbornness well, but he had one weakness—women in trouble. “Roxy’s defenseless. She doesn’t even have her magic. And if Liam does go after her, I need you there to stop him. Dead.”
Phoenix crossed his arms over his chest, clearly frustrated. “You’d better not get killed, dragon boy.”
Key grinned. “Can’t. You still haven’t let Ailish see my dragon tattoo.”
Ailish laughed. “Oh! Maybe you should show me now, before you go out.”
“Damn it,” Phoenix said and a second later, purple and blue wings sprang from his back. One wing hit the wall, and the other curled around Ailish, stroking her possessively.
“That shit never gets old.” Key laughed. The soul-mirror bond gave the witch hunters real wings to protect their witch. Phoenix’s bird was insanely jealous of Key’s dragon. He never cared that Ailish saw the other hunters’ tats or wings, but the dragon made the bird crazy. So far, Phoenix hadn’t let Ailish see the dragon, and since she had to use his vision to do it, he was winning the battle.
Ailish smiled and stroked the wings.
“Leave before I cut out your liver and feed it to the bird,” Phoenix growled.
Key’s humor faded and he strode out to track his resurrected brother.
Roxy let the security guy open her hotel room door. Heeding Kieran’s warning about rogues being able to get into her room, she was being careful. When she left his hotel room, she’d gone to her friend Meryl’s room and stayed there. No one would know she was there. All she wanted to do now was throw her things into the suitcase and move them to Meryl’s room. She was booked on a flight out tomorrow.
She could just go home now.
She should.
But she’d done months of research, and she’d believed that either Dyfyr or The Eternal Assassins were the project that she and her cousin Shayla Banfield had been looking for to work together on. Shayla needed work as a screenwriter, but even more, she needed something to be passionate about. Plus if Roxy went home now, her father would know something was up. She could tell him, but he’d be upset. Her father was adamant that she let her chakras die and become mortal. If he knew she’d found her Awakening, he’d watch her like a hawk. Question her, refuse to send her on assignments.
Roxy could do this. Mack she could handle; she wouldn’t give him the opportunity to drug her again.
But Key … she had to keep her distance from him. The picture on his wall had scared her, but what truly terrified her was the reaction of her schema. When she’d showered this morning, she saw more color invading her schema, obviously from being with Kieran. It was a shock to see it after watching it fade. The whole area was sensitive, the
brush of her fingers tingled in a way that made her really uneasy. Something edgy and unfamiliar was happening in her.
Sexual heat.
No. She refused to turn into a passionately destructive witch. Ever. The schema would stop as long as she stayed away from Kieran. It had to. She hadn’t even told Shayla that she’d found her Awakening.
The security guard walked up to her. “Ma’am, I checked and your room is empty.” He handed the key card over to her.
Relieved, she stepped into the hallway next to the bathroom and closet, thanked him, then closed and locked the door. Taking a deep breath, she turned and choked when Kieran suddenly appeared in front of her. “Argh!” She strangled on the sound, as she stared. Where’d he come from? He towered over her by at least a half-dozen inches, and his body filled the foyer. The scent of Chianti came off him in waves. His eyes were a mix of blue water and smoky anger. He took a step toward her. “No more running. We’re going to talk.”
Adrenaline surged through her, and she almost turned to run, but she was a quick learner. Last time she’d done that, he’d pinned her against the door. Instead, she lifted her head and said, “How did the security guy not see you? Were you invisible or do you have some power to just pop in wherever you want?”
“I appeared invisible to the security guard. I broke into your room when I found you missing. I also broke into Mack Daemon’s room and found an interesting picture.”
His voice was low, but the black muscle shirt stretched over his chest shifted strangely. She stared, but all she saw was the shirt straining to contain the rise and fall of a massive chest as Key reached for something in his pocket. She noticed his arms were thickly muscled. The man had been lifting more than pencils. He looked like he could bench-press her. And given how easily he’d lifted her last night …
“Look.”
The sharp word made her jump and she jerked her gaze to the BlackBerry he held out. Her heart slammed against her breastbone. Blood surged through her as embarrassment and humiliation burned her fiery blush. “My schema.” The mark that symbolized everything she hated. All her life, she’d been torn between her parents—her mother insisting she give her life over to magic, her father demanding she become mortal. And both made her feel that their love was conditional on how that mark ended up—dead and gone or alive in full color.
Sinful Magic: A Wing Slayer Novel Page 4
