by K. F. Breene
My first impulse was to reach for my dagger. A huge smile erupted on my face and I stared at Toa manically, daring him to try anything. I even had my rape whistle handy—he didn’t know what he was messing with!
Then I took a big breath and forced it all away. Stefan could do that with just a look, usually when he wasn’t even trying. Something would irritate him, or I would put myself in danger somehow, and his face would contort into a severe mask that had my heart beating and my butt tingling. He didn’t need the pheromones. Through stubborn practice, I’d gotten used to ignoring it.
Toa blinked twice, straightening up. If I looked really hard, I swear I could see a faint flush. Swear I could.
“Next,” Dominicous prompted.
A haze swept over me, clouding my awareness and almost my vision. I hated it. It made me feel lost and dizzy, and I hated both of those sensations. It’s why I never took up smoking.
I drew in a blast of power and wiped the thought away, finding a lingering presence at the outside of my skull where Toa lurked. I soaked into it, and then applied fire, blasting it open.
Toa staggered back, his eyes wide.
“I gave him an expression!” I giggled. It was the small things.
“What happened?” Dominicous said, appearing on the edge of his seat without his body actually moving. Eyes like the gleaming edge of a blade, he was ready to fight, but still seemingly lounging in the chair. Neat.
Also, awful. And scary. He didn’t need the pheromones to manipulate fear, either.
“She broke my attempt. Like shattering the overlay on her mind. Full of surprises, this one. She shouldn’t have been allowed to exist so long without training. But then, she has developed some truly spectacular defenses. I’d like to see her in a foreign place. I have a feeling she could develop many lost treasures.”
“Try to cut off my magic,” I blurted. I wanted to see if the little ditty I’d just done would work on that.
“All in due time,” Toa replied noncommittally.
My body erupted in goose bumps, shivers of delight working up from my groin. My face flushed and my skin started to tingle. Wow, it felt good. Like I wanted to reach out and touch the smooth sex trap in front of me. It reminded me of when I’d first met Charles and my brain went on complete hiatus despite the setting. That level of coercion I’d long since been able to block. But Mr. Toa-man had some tricks up his sleeve. He gave it to me much harder, breaking through my already practiced blocks.
It wasn’t him I wanted, though.
My gaze slid across his almost too perfect face and sought those deep, dark eyes of the man I loved. I wanted to rip his clothes off and take him right now, these people be damned. He sat across the room, a twinkle in his eyes, his bulge pronounced and ready. Fire shot through our link, fizzling up my body and nearly overtaking me. I focused on that earth-shattering face, rugged and handsome, an appearance to give any fabled vampire a run for their money.
I heard a throat clear.
“I think she has gotten off track,” Dominicous said lightly. “What an unusual smell. Like…fallen leaves on the lush forest floor. Vibrant and alive.”
Stefan winked, pride welling up in our link. I’d still chosen him even though the pheromones were supposed to direct me toward Toa.
Silly man. Of course I’d choose him! Who wouldn’t?
“I’d like to see this overflow you two speak of,” Dominicous said as I pulled my gaze away from Stefan.
“Until I pass out, or just enough to stay conscious?” I clarified. “I’m no stranger to magic shock, but I’m also no stranger to nearly dying from it. So…”
“Conscious would be best, if at all possible.” Dominicous hid a smirk.
Hmph.
I drew in, filled up, and felt the warning prickles. Here we go. I kept on going, letting more gush in. Past a healthy dose and on, to the red line. More still. When my vision got hazy I opened the link and let Stefan siphon off whatever he could hold. A lovely white-gold sparkling arch of magic bloomed in the room. It’s use? I had no idea, but it sure was pretty.
Obviously I didn’t create it. Otherwise it might have tried to eat somebody.
“Again, Sasha, but steal the magic this time. Not all, but enough to get your point across and stay on your feet,” Stefan commanded lightly.
Righty-o. He apparently thought I was a master at this stuff.
I tried to remember how I did it the first time—I didn’t just pull elements; I focused on the others in the room. Then, because I couldn’t grasp the magic they held—since they held it within themselves—I envisioned them trying to hurt Stefan. Trying to direct an attack as Trek had done. As if I pulled a string from their bodies, I slowly emptied not only the room, but them, of magic.
The warning came in a rush this time, threatening to overwhelm me. Pain lanced my body, my inner alarm blaring. I felt Stefan tug on the link, taking magic from my body, trying to balance me, but there was too much. Toa could hold a bit more than Trek. Dominicous could hold as much as Stefan. All in all, too much!
The flood drowned me, dumped over my head and suffocated me. I felt consciousness leaving, like I had at that battle. More magic siphoned out, but even more dumped in.
I threw my palms out. Black exploded into the room, turned the air sluggish, and then thick. Then solid. Everyone froze, not because they wanted to, but because I’d just—somehow—successfully executed the thickening spell. Really executed it, too. The only person that could move was me.
Alarm pulsed through the link. Stefan stared at me, unable to even talk because he couldn’t move his jaw.
“So, shit. Lemme…shit!” I thought really hard. I’d never been able to do it, so I didn’t know how to undo it.
I sprinted for the door, but couldn’t rip it open because of the damn air. “Crap!”
I sprinted in the other direction, diving through the open window like James Bond, and then running so fast around the giant mansion that my legs didn’t feel like my own. I hammered down the hallway, burst through two doors, straight armed a naked dude advancing on a waiting woman wearing a blindfold, and catapulted into the correct corridor. A team of attack-dog looking men waited outside of the room I was just in. Harsh and well-trained, they were supposed to be guarding against any foul play.
They weren’t doing a real bang-up job!
“Anybody know how to break or stop a thickening spell?” I gasped, my sides heaving as I gulped air.
A whole defense team of eyes turned my way. There was an awkward beat while they placed my face and comprehended my words, and then they were active. Just not in the way I had hoped.
Three guys reached for me immediately. I dodged out of the way and ducked under another pair of giant, groping hands. I backed against the wall and threw a protective spell around myself, not knowing any other way to keep them off while getting very important information.
Three sets of hands kept reaching for me, apparently overconfident in their invincibility. A loud buzzing flung them away from my self-made cage.
“So, anyway, I need help undoing a spell…” I said in a rush.
A six-and-a-half foot block of muscle stepped in front of me. “Where is the Regional?”
“He’s in the room still, locked in place because I turned the air solid. I need to undo that. Quickly. I’m pretty sure they can breathe, but if they can’t, we don’t have much time!”
The man stared at me for a second. If I hadn’t grown used to Toa, it would have disconcerted me. He turned to someone behind him. “Break open the door.”
“Best to try and rip it out. Air’s solid. It’s not going in…” I reminded, and then shrank against the wall as the flat-eyed stare of the large guy turned back to me.
“How did you turn the air solid?” he asked, his deep voice thundering out of his chest.
“Uh…with a spell…” I grimaced in a hopeful sort of way.
Through the link, Stefan’s alarm had turned into bemused patience. The man dealt wit
h a lot where it concerned me, and when in private, it tickled him to no end. I had no idea why, because I even flabbergasted myself. But at least he could breathe. That was the main thing.
“Show me,” the guard said.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” I shook my head as the first guard tried to bust down the door. Obviously it didn’t go into the room, but it did splinter. The wooden shards were pulled away, revealing a room with three men as still as the grave, all except their eyes. Charles, probably wishing he hadn’t been put in the room, was most probably still in his corner, and out of view.
I waited behind my shield, watching each man try to force their way into the room. “Good spell, though,” I mused. “Kind of tiring, though. That one could definitely come in handy down the road, I think.”
“Undo this,” the head guard said to me. Not too bright, this guy.
“Yeah, I would love to. Which is exactly why I had to go through the window and come around here. I have no idea how.”
“Undo what you did. Reverse it!”
Toa started to loudly hum in that way a person does when their mouth was gagged but they had important information to impart. I moved to the end of my protective bubble and peered in the room, just making out his wide eyes.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Toa seems perturbed.”
“Then how do we undo it?” the head guard asked.
It was like I hadn’t run up in a dead sprint a few minutes ago asking that very same question. “Possibly find a teacher of mine to lend a hand?”
Toa started to do his communicatory hum again.
“Maybe not. He’s probably afraid I’ll blow them up.”
An hour later I sat in my bubble, cross-legged on the ground, my chin on my fists, watching as white power zipped around the room. My magic had receded, and while the men couldn’t move much, they could move enough for Toa to get his palms and magic active. I was plenty able to suck the residual magic out of the room now, and I suspected Stefan could’ve as well, using that weird balancing thing he did, but the humor dancing in his eyes as Toa stubbornly tried to undo whatever I had done, kept me from mentioning it.
Finally, in a bright flare, I felt a tug on my chest. All captured men took a huge, lung-filling breath.
“Okay, come out of there.” The head guard, whose name was Bernie, jerked his hand in the air to facilitate my removal.
“Nope. I think I’ll just hang on to see if they’re angry.”
“Your magic fades. You’ll have to come out sometime.”
“Wrong again. I keep replenishing this spell. Or charm. You know, I have no idea what the difference is. At any rate, this baby is as strong as strong can be. I’m good in here for a little longer.”
Unfortunately, a little longer wasn’t long at all.
One very serious-looking Regional strolled up to my self-made cage and looked down on me. His perfectly blank face still managed to communicate his complete lack of humor at that moment. “Care to enlighten us on what happened?”
That stare had me babbling. “Too much power filled me too quickly and I had to do something with it! For some reason I did that thickening spell. But then I didn’t know how to undo it because I’d never successfully done it before. But I couldn’t open the door because the air was, well, you know how it was. So I ran around the side, but then your guards thought I did something awful—which doesn’t really make sense since I ran back toward them—so I locked myself in here for protection until we could figure it out!”
“You tried that spell outside and couldn’t complete it. Why did it work this time?”
“I have no idea!”
And I didn’t. Largely, everything to do with magic had thus far eluded me. School had never been my strong suit. My magic not working properly meant I hadn’t been able to figure it out.
“She has been working with lesser levels of power in the wrong way,” Toa explained, leaning against the walls. “She could have great control, but first needs to learn the ways of directing her power. It is like riding a bicycle extremely slow. The bicycle wobbles; balance is hard to maintain. Ride it with more speed, and you will steer with ease.”
Toa could learn a thing or two from Dominicous’s stare.
“I see. I am not in the habit of sitting, for an hour, in extremely uncomfortable situations.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
He grunted. Apparently an apology had been his agenda. After the explanation, obviously.
He turned to Stefan. “We’ll need another room. I’d like to wrap this up and make plans for the next steps.”
“There’s more?” I asked in horror.
“Not for you. Please wait in your chambers until you are called. You are excused.”
After glancing toward Stefan and seeing I wasn’t in any danger, I picked apart my protective shield and went on my way. Charles did not follow.
*****
“Toa, results please,” Dominicous asked with a straight back, sitting in a leather chair.
They’d moved to a room in the back of the mansion and warded the room against eavesdroppers. They each sat in separate chairs, trying to mask the importance of these findings, both for Stefan, and for their overall cause. Finding someone with a black power level could open doors they hadn’t even contemplated.
Stefan had another reason to be nervous, as well. They would need to discuss his mate, and his future. Most importantly, what would happen if those two things couldn’t both be Sasha while in his leadership role.
“Her power is beyond my own,” Toa said easily. “It doesn’t work like mine, either—like ours. She is like a conductor for magic. Like a hub. She doesn’t have to reach for it and pull it into herself, she merely has to identify which elements to let in, and then try to stop the flow once she has begun to draw. Her spells will continue building magic until realized, always trying to return back to her. As you saw, her spells, once laid, take longer to unravel. And like you saw, that is not always a good thing.”
“Then…she is definitely black,” Dominicous clarified.
Stefan held his breath.
“Without a doubt, she is a myth reincarnate. And completely, completely ignorant as to the ways magic works. All the training she’s received thus far is useless. She blows things up because she is the polar opposite to my—our people’s—power. She tries to work a spell inverted, and it combusts.”
Stefan let his breath out in a slow exhale. He couldn’t say he wasn’t relieved. “Odd for a human to wield black, though.”
“Not at all,” Toa waved him away like a pauper at a king’s table. “She is the polar opposite because she is human. You are familiar with the yin-yang sign. That was originally created as a representation of the union of the different sides of magic. White and black magic working together is the strongest cohesive bond in the world. White magic is also a scale. As is black. She is at the higher end of the scale; I am at the middle of white. The black power has always been wielded by a human, the white by us. That is why it is so intensely rare. Not rare to possess—not any more than white—but rare to find. One in a million. Humans have power, but so rarely seen because so few believe. And also because we…have our own prejudices.
“At the top of the scale, and acting as a hub, which is rare in itself—not because she is human, but in general—it is like trying to swim in the ocean in the middle of a hurricane. Magic is wild, and forcing into her like it does, makes the wielder constantly fight for control—even in someone experienced. Mistakes can easily be fatal. Because of this—that is speculation—she has developed some sort of rough control directly tied to survival. Living untrained for so long, she has learned to coexist. Now, however, seeing how she is supposed to work with it, the danger becomes more grave. Her ability to take in magic more extreme.”
“You see, Toa, she was fated to live,” Dominicous said in a smug sort of way.
Stefan barely had time to wonder at that comment when Toa snorted. “One in a million. T
he odds are incredible, but here she is. What next?”
Dominicous turned to Stefan. “You plan to mate her, is that right?”
A thrill went down Stefan’s back. Without hesitation, he answered, “Yes.”
“Like her power level, mating between kinds has turned into myth. At least with someone of your stature and position. Your people must approve in order to grant her that title. If she cannot lead, she is useless, and therefore cannot mate you. It is twisted, you see.”
Stefan nodded.
“I understand your enthusiasm, of course,” Dominicous went on. “She is your one true mate. She needs your power and special ability balancing the wildness of it, and you gain and exult from hers. You two sync. That is plain to see. If you can work in tandem, you could create an exponentially dynamic team. You have linked with her already, you have marked her…and you are in luck on a couple of scores. One, she is a seer. Or, more probably, has seer blood. That is the reason for the smell she has when aroused. Or, I should say, that is the side-effect. There are other smells, but mostly females exude them. It doesn’t seem as though she has many female friends within this group…”
Stefan shook his head to the question as he asked, “Seer?” He’d never heard of such a thing.
“Humans have this trait in large doses. Many become psychics or readers of some kind, some even ghost hunters—even though that is a different talent. Some just think it is female intuition or, for a man, a shot of ego. Regardless, she has some sort of partial ability on that score. That secures her as a justifiable lineage for mating, besides the huge blessing in magical power, of course.”
“Why are you helping me? I would’ve thought you’d resist a human as my mate. Possibly even try to take her with you back to the Council for training within the folds of political power.”
“Why am I helping you?” Dominicous asked. “That is simple. She is my kindred.”
After a long pause, Stefan said, “Come again?”
Chapter 5
I sat facing the woods on a wooden bench just behind the mansion’s back door. For the last half hour Stefan had blasted incredulity through the link, then suspicion, then mistrust. Finally, resignation. I knew it had to be about me. What else could it be? I could be hopelessly narcissistic at times, especially while hopeful in a dress, but I didn’t think this was a case of fashion-itis.
