Harem of Magic

by Emma Dawn

  “I had two,” I snapped at him.

  He grinned. “I can do four.”

  My jaw dropped. “So, this is a game to you then?”

  “Life is a game, Dom,” Lucas said, moving around the counter until he was right in front of me, blocking out the others with those intense violet eyes. “I don’t ever lose. Well,” he paused and flicked his eyes skyward, “maybe I lost once. But that was a long time ago and I don’t like to think about it. That is what attempting to love someone does, it brings pain. I don’t suggest it for your long term mental health.” He winked at me as if to soften the words.

  His presence was overwhelming my better senses and I forced my feet to obey me and took a few steps back. “Look, spill the beans. Tell me what is really going on. Or you can just all fuck the hell off.”

  “You would banish us?” Diego’s brown eyes were hurt. “We saved you and your friend at great risk to ourselves, and you would cast us out like beggars? We are here to help you, and to untangle us from you so you remain safe.”

  I made myself look at him, to not notice the cut of his jaw or the texture of his skin I wanted so badly to touch. “I would cast out liars and cheats. Ain’t nobody got time for that shit. Not in this lifetime, and not in my next, thank you very much. So, unless you all want to start talking, telling me just what is really going on, you can leave.”

  Corbin cleared his throat. “There is a war going on between the warlocks. One faction is made up of those who would take our power and use it to control the other supernaturals, and the other is made up of those of us who would continue as guardians of our world. The oracle said the key to bringing peace was here, with you. She said you hold an untapped power, and that we were to help you find it. No one else would be able to help you. According to the oracle. Part of that is bedding you.”

  I stared at him, and as clear as the summer’s blue sky I knew he would never lie. I could see it in his face, see it in the hard cut of his eyes that he didn’t like holding back the truth, even if it hurt someone else. Unlike Sterling, Corbin’s face was an open book, his emotions flying across without any effort on his part to hide them. “When would you have told me this?”

  “As soon as I was able to get you alone,” Corbin said. “But I want to make it very clear that Diego and Sterling are not to be blamed. They have a spell of compulsion on them to keep them to their course, placed on them by the oracle herself. They had no choice. Lucas and I were left alone because we saw what happened to them and agreed, knowing we would break our word and be cast out for it if it was ever discovered. But there is too much at stake not to be honest with you.”

  I frowned, confusion tangling up my brain. “The oracle did this?”

  Corbin shook his head. “No, the leader of our order. Gavin. He does not want the humans to know. He feels the less they know, the better for all of us, even the other supernaturals. He is not at his best right now and he made a poor decision. We’d been hoping to come to you soon, to see if the call to you was in the flesh or only in the dreamscape.”

  So much information in such a short period of time made the inside of my head ache. “Okay, I have a couple of questions. Why do you think I’m sleeping with all of you?”

  “Simple,” Diego said softly, “you want to.”

  Chapter 6

  Standing in the kitchen of my sister’s home, with four large warlocks sounded like the start of some weird romance book. Like something my sister would have a heck of a time writing, cackling about how she loved to torture her characters before giving them a happy ending. Only I wasn’t sure there could be any happy ending here.

  Now, did it matter that Diego and his comment of “You want all of us” was right? No, no it didn’t. This was not the same situation as my sister where lives were on the line despite the mention of a war between two warlock factions.

  This was just . . . figuring out what exactly they were doing here because they were not real. I had to find a way through this delusion so I could move on with my life. Suddenly I wished I’d agreed to taking the prescription sleeping pills my therapist had suggested. She’d said they would block the dreams. Maybe if I’d blocked the dreams, I wouldn’t have fallen this far into the delusion.

  As it was, now, I had to somehow work my way through it.

  I shook my head. “You said earlier when I was sleeping but not sleeping, that you four were coming to me in my dreams, not the other way around of me calling you to me. Why would you let me believe this was somehow my doing?”

  The four of them exchanged glances and I could see they were planning something I wasn’t going to like. And that cut me far more than I wanted to admit. Screw working through anything.

  “Out. All of you get the fuck out of my house.” I pointed at them one at a time, words coming to me from deep inside. “You four may be the most beautiful men I’ve ever met, I may very well want to fuck each of you senseless but I will not be lied to. I will not be manipulated in a game of four against one. Get the fuck out!”

  Sure, I was yelling, but I didn’t care that my words were hard or loud. “I deserve honesty,” I said softer now, “If you can’t give me that, then this cannot go on. Delusion or not, I deserve better.”

  One by one they pulled up their hoods, covering their faces and took a step back, disappearing in front of my eyes. I clutched at the edge of the counter, using it to hold me upright because my knees were shaking. I pressed a hand to my forehead.

  “What the hell is going on?” I whispered to myself. “I have truly lost my mind.”

  I made my way to my bedroom and paced around the small space. Rose was the only one who knew my struggles. Maybe she was out of the coma now. I grabbed my cell phone and called the hospital.

  “I’d like to check on Rose Duvall, the doctor said that she might wake up today?” The doctor had said no such thing but still it didn’t hurt to put out the optimistic side of things.

  “I’m sorry, she’s still asleep. You’re on the call list if she wakes up?” the nurse asked.

  I sighed. “Yes, I am. Thank you.” I hung up and stared at the phone. “Rose, I could really use you about now. Would be nice to have a second brain and set of eyes on the craziness I’m dealing with.”

  I put the phone down and pulled out clean clothes then made my way to the shower. I fumbled with the medicine closet until I found the Prozalin that my therapist had prescribed. She said it would help with the mental breaks I was having with seeing things that weren’t there. I paused and stared at the bottle. “I should take two of them.”

  But then . . . what if Lucas, Corbin, Sterling, and Diego disappeared forever? Something in my heart region tightened and tears crept along the edges of my eyes. Never seeing them again was something I should want. But . . . I found myself believing they hadn’t wanted to be dishonest. “You are a fool. A fucking idiotic fool,” I whispered to myself as I unscrewed the cap on the anti-delusion drugs and poured them into the toilet.

  I stared at my face in the mirror. Be honest with yourself, even if you aren’t with them. I could almost hear Rose giving me advice.

  “I want to believe in magic,” I said. “I want it so badly, I would give up my reality for it. No matter the cost.”

  I blew out a breath and nodded. Honesty was tough, but there it was.

  Next was the shower. I wanted, no needed, to get Sterling’s smell off my skin to somehow wash away the sensation of his hands. To wash away the hurt I’d seen in Diego’s eyes. The condemnation in Corbin’s. The laughter in Lucas’s. Because for right now, I was pissed at them and I didn’t want to think about why they’d done what they had.

  I scrubbed fast and hard, until my skin was pink but it didn’t dissolve the sensations that waited for me at the edge of my mind. I flicked the cold water on full blast and let out a yelp as it went from a lovely heat to icy cold, making my skin tighten in an instant. I stayed under the cold water until I was shaking with the cold, my hand barely able to manage the handle to flick t
he water off. I stumbled out of the shower and grabbed a towel off the heated rack and wrapped it around my shivering body. The mirror was lacking in any fog after that blast of cold and I let the towel drop.

  The mirror reflected my face and bedraggled hair, blue tinged lips and the wild look in my eyes a testament to my mental state. “Seeing things will do that to you.” I reached up to touch the scars over my upper chest. Sometimes when I looked at them, I saw a pattern as if the attack hadn’t been random at all. And that was the biggest reason I was letting myself believe in the magic. Because the scars were real. I had medical records of them and yet there was no explanation for how they came to be.

  Even now, a year later, I wondered if I would ever remember that night. I closed my eyes. I’d gone to the bar with Rose, and she said I left around eleven. She said she’d put me into a taxi and sent me home.

  I’d woken up in the bathroom of my apartment in a pool of blood and covered in partially healed wounds. I frowned at myself, not liking where my thoughts suddenly dipped. I was no child. I knew that coincidence happened but an attack like this with no memory, and my blood alcohol level had been well below the legal limit, and now with the introduction of magic into my life. . . what if the two were connected somehow?

  No, that couldn’t be, could it? I mean, sure I’d met vampires and werewolves, but there were times I let myself believe that those encounters were part of my brain’s delusions. Easier than believing they were real.

  No more. Maybe I should go to Ally? Maybe she would be able to help me understand what was happening.

  I clenched my fists, picked up my towel and bolted for my bedroom. I grabbed the pair of sweats, underwear, and shirt I’d already pulled out, and yanked them on, my mind racing, fighting to figure out a way to handle things.

  My bedroom was done up in maroons with touches of gold here and there to offset the rich color. I’d give my sister this, she had a knack for the designing of a place. The room looked as though it had been pulled out of one of her romance novels down to the lights hanging off each of the posts of the four-poster bed, the swooping chandelier, the thick rug and pile of pillows.

  I closed my eyes, knowing that while I’d booted the four men out, if they really cared as they said they did, not all of them would have left. And if they were my delusions, I could call them back to me.

  “Which one of you is watching me?” I said.

  The shadows of the bedroom shifted and from them stepped Corbin, surprising me.

  “I am watching you. Did you decide you were wrong?”

  “No, I was not wrong, thank you very much.” I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at him. “But I have a question.”

  He rolled his shoulders. “Of what do you want to question me?”

  I tipped my head at the way he worded his question. Of what . . .very archaic. I cleared my throat. “The scars I have, can you tell if they were . . .magical?”

  He startled hard. “What do you mean?”

  I bit my lower lip. “You promise that you will tell me the truth no matter what?”

  He flipped off his hood. “Let me explain something to you since you decided to kick us out when we are here to help you, to protect you, and lying to you was the only way to allow us to even get here. Without those lies, the oracle would never had let us go—”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be protected! Maybe I want to fight for myself!” I barely recalled standing, but there I was, nose to nose with one of the most arrogant men I’d ever dealt with, and that was saying something considering I’d been dealing with Sterling the last year, aka Pompous.

  He stared down at me, those icy blue eyes giving nothing away. “Ask your question.”

  I swallowed hard, the heat of his body radiating off him and drawing me closer. I fisted my hands into the loose material of the sweat pants and took a slow breath. “Sterling didn’t say anything about the scars, but then the lights were dim and I’m not sure how much he actually saw. He touched them but that is not the same as seeing them.” I made myself keep going. “If I show the scars to you, can you tell if they were done magically?”

  “Why would you even think that?” He frowned, confusion written over his hard features. Like a big dog that tipped its head sideways. They still looked bad ass tough, but the confusion softened them.

  “If I tell you, will you be honest with me?”

  He looked to the ceiling. “Dominique, it is not any of our intentions to mislead you. There are rules, and then there are compulsions. We, all four of us, are bound by both.”

  “So, you’re saying you won’t be honest with me? You give me bits and pieces and expect me to guess the correct answers?” I took a step back as hard as it was to do so because a part of me wanted to lean into him, to let him hold me for a moment. A shiver ran through my spine and I told myself it was a leftover of the cold shower.

  “I will tell you what I can. The oracle can be a controlling bitch and she is the one who did this to us, who put the bindings on us and there are consequences to speaking ill against her. . .” he seemed to struggle for a moment and then a flicker of light wrapped around his throat . . .like a rope woven from magic, glittering and constricting around his neck. As I watched, it tightened, biting into his flesh. His hands went to his throat and he went to his knees, his eyes closed and his face turning a frightening shade of red as the living rope shimmered and moved as if it were some sort of snake and not just a rope.

  “Corbin!”

  I leapt toward him, and without thinking, put my hands over the glittering rope, pulling at it with all I had in me. It burned my hands but I ignored the pain in my fingertips and kept pulling. The rope hissed as I shredded it with my nails, clawing at it as Corbin slumped to the side, his body sagging under the lack of oxygen.

  “Hang on!” I yelled at him, frantic to free him from this binding, whatever it was. My fingers were scorched as if I were touching a stove element on high, but I couldn’t stop. His life was on the line and I couldn’t lose him. Not now, when he’d just truly stepped into my life.

  The rope slowly unraveled with each pull, until it lay on the floor in pieces, the pieces then fading away to nothing. Not a single shred of evidence there was ever anything there. I was breathing hard and I held my hands at my sides, afraid to look at them. Surely, they would be blistered, blackened from the heat of the rope burn.

  “Are you okay?” I whispered. “What was that?”

  His eyes flicked open and he gave a low groan. “How did you do that?”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. “I don’t know what you mean. I . . . there was a rope on your neck and I pulled it off.” I dared a glance at my hands and saw nothing. No burn. No blistered wounds. As if the heat had never been.

  His eyebrows shot up as he rubbed at his neck. “You could . . .see . . . the rope?”

  I nodded. “Well, I mean it’s gone now so maybe there was never any rope and I’m just imagining shit. As per usual. But I think I’m going to go with that. That I can see things others can’t. Maybe that makes me special, right?”

  Corbin shook his head and ran a hand over the top of it. “That was the binding I had on me. We each have one. When we find the woman who will be our equal, the binding is released and we are free from the oracle. Which begs the question, why would she send me to you if she knew . . .” He trailed off as he lifted his hand and brushed it along the edge of my jaw. “I did not expect you to have that much magic in you, Dominique. Certainly, not that you would disarm the binding with nothing more than a touch.”

  I leaned my head into his hand, his touch soothing me and the jitters. I decided to ignore what he’d said about me having magic. I’d always wanted to be able to cast a spell, like the wizards I’d grown up reading, so it was no surprise that my own mind made that part of this elaborate delusion. Maybe I should have taken the Prozalin after all.

  “You mean you can be honest with me now?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I will not lie to you aga
in. Even if it hurts you.”

  I scooted forward. We were both on our knees and I shimmied until mine were between his. “The scars. I need you to look at them. But I . . . I don’t want you to turn away from me. They are ugly, Corbin.”

  He cupped my face and leaned in, pressing the gentlest of kisses against my mouth. I lifted my hands and put them over his, holding him to me. He spoke against my mouth.

  “I would never turn from you, Dominique. I am yours now. You can cast me aside, and that is your right as the one to take the binding from me, but I will never willingly walk from your side. Not even if you command me to.”

  His words were a balm to a fear deeply seated in me, one I shied from sleeping or awake. My parents had both died leaving me when I was just a teenager. And my sister who’d been my rock had left to live her life within the Hive and her men. And now my best friend was in a coma. Everyone I loved had left me. What if that doomed him? What if there was something wrong with me that meant I couldn’t have people I loved in my life?

  “I see the fear in your eyes, Dom,” he whispered. “Whatever curse you think you hold, I will face it with you. There is nothing to be afraid of as long as we are together.”

  “Pretty soft words for a rather cranky man,” I whispered back through a wobbly smile.

  One side of his lips tipped up. “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m all bark and no bite.”

  He dropped his head so it pressed into mine and there thrummed between us a strength I drew from.

  I bit my lower lip but I had to bring it up. “And Sterling?”

  Corbin laughed and I was shocked at the sound, the depth of it. Maybe because I’d never heard it before. “What of him?”

  “I slept with him, and I . . .I still, I don’t know if I can…” Ah, this was harder to say out loud than inside my head. “I still want him, Corbin. I have a connection with him even though he wasn’t honest with me.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “This is not like your human world where the men are jealous pricks who try to control their women and their sexuality. It is not uncommon that a Cabal will end up sharing a single woman between them. If she is the right one, a woman of strength, then she is the right one. End of story.”