The COMPLETE Witching Pen Series, Boxed Set

by Dianna Hardy

  “Why does your bedroom door have a lock?”

  He reached with a hand, turned the knob, then pressed the button in the middle. “Penthouses have everything.”

  Then he was hurrying them both back to the bed, only Mary had undone his trousers at some point he had no recollection of, and he lost his balance as they pooled and twisted around his calves. They both fell forwards, and he landed heavily on top of her on the floor.

  Very suave. “Are you all ri—”

  She yanked him down and thrust her tongue between his lips, her hands reaching into his underwear, while her feet made swift work of sliding them down his legs.

  That burning desire, which was associated with her and no one else, washed over him like a heatwave.

  “I want you,” she growled into his ear. “Don’t be gentle. If this is the last time we ever do this… I want you hard. Be rough with me. Make me feel you. I don’t want my body to ever forget you again.”

  His wings buffeting out to each side and above them, gave his response, and he was there, already serving her needs, because she awoke the primitive angel in him. No one else ever had.

  When newly fallen, like all newly fallen angels, he’d had no control over his thirst; over his bloodlust. You fell to Earth and that was that – no parent, no guardian – you were left to survive in a physical body you knew nothing about; to nurture physical needs you could not fathom… And ten thousand years ago, McDonalds didn’t exist – not an awful lot did. If you wanted fast food, you had to be faster than it. You caught it before it ran away, and sucked it dry before anyone else claimed it. Blood, for an angel just fallen, was what milk was to a baby, and completely necessary for the degree of physical health required if you were going to survive on this planet with your sanity intact. Some never weaned themselves off the blood, becoming blood-drinkers forever, and unwittingly created the myth of the ‘vampire’ that humans seemed so taken by. If only they knew…

  For a while there, he’d wondered if he was doomed to eternity as a blood-drinker, because, God help him, he hadn’t been able to stop. His teeth – so foreign in his mouth – had grown hard and long, his wings had grown limp and had started to fade. He’d been able to latch onto the scent of blood from a mile away; a trait he’d tempered, denied even, but never lost. In the end, it was his will alone that had pulled him out of bloodlust and into clarity. He would never find his Ymari if he was a slave to anything, and that included his most basic needs. He had gone cold turkey and forced himself off blood; had thrown himself into missions and causes to keep his mind out of the gutter, and his teeth out of people’s major arteries.

  It had taken just under five thousand years of brutal hard work, but eventually, his fangs disappeared, and his wings became permanent. However, just like an alcoholic, his need always lurked in the background, hidden, waiting to emerge when he was at his weakest. The closest he’d come to losing his control was in the prison with Mary. The scent of her blood had already awoken a dark desire within him when he’d properly noticed it that first time outside Karl’s house. At the prison, when he’d cut her, it had taken every ounce of willpower he had not to taste her. Ironically, if he had, he would have known instantly who she was – there would have been no denying it any more – and the whole string of crazy events that followed would never have happened, because he wouldn’t have left her side. But life was full of shitty what-ifs.

  “Gwain,” whimpered Mary against his lips, and he groaned at the fact that she was soaked between her legs. Her hands frantically moved against him, tracing the muscles of his chest, squeezing and exploring them, and then her hand was on his wrist, moving his own beyond the juncture of her thighs, sliding his fingers along the crease of her backside, until they rested on the sensitive opening of her anus.

  “More,” she said, her voice husky with need. “I want more of you. I want to feel you everywhere … take me over…”

  “Fuck, what you do to me…” he whispered hoarsely, tugging her earlobe with his teeth, as he eased his finger inside her soft, tight flesh. At the same time, he repositioned himself slightly, and his cock found her entrance. There was no effort involved in slipping inside her, they were both so ready, so near to the edge… “Heaven doesn’t hold a candle to you, Mary. You’re extraordinary.”

  She mumbled something incoherent, and rocked her hips faster against him.

  He knew she was close – inevitably, so was he. He moved up a bit, so he could sink deeper into her. He slid his free hand up her arms, took her wrists and held them firmly to ground above her head, but he kept his rhythm slow and steady. “I know you said you want rough, honey, but I promise you’ll get to feel more of me this way.”

  Her reply was a clenching around his shaft and finger, as a mini-orgasm filtered through her.

  His whole body hardened, preparing for climax.

  “Bite me,” she cried suddenly. “Please … take me into you…”

  His bloodlust roared, and his body obeyed. He wouldn’t have been able to stop if he wanted to – not this time. He may have lost his deadly canines five thousand years ago, but his teeth still had a subtle sharp edge to them, and breaking the skin on the side of her neck was easy.

  As was their strange connection, his own skin split open and seeped in sympathy, and Mary latched on to him, the same time he did her.

  Her blood hit his taste buds, and he couldn’t tell whether it was her or him crying out in ecstasy, but as their joint orgasm consumed them, he knew without a doubt that he didn’t want her dead. Whatever the reason, whatever salvation it promised, he wasn’t ready to kill her.

  Nor was he ready for the hellish vision that tore through him, like a blade through his sternum.

  One minute he was in paradise, the next, he was catapulted half way across the room on nothing more than the force of the nightmarish images invading his mind.

  He yelled out in anguish as those images came alive inside him and took him over, so he became what they were and felt everything they showed him. He’d seen some horrors in his time – these represented the worst of them.

  He knew – he knew – they’d come from Mary. He’d felt it seconds after her blood filled his mouth, right after the initial euphoria. How the fuck had she coped with these from the age of seven? And whilst being human?

  But he wasn’t human. He was an angel, and one that was created using the light of Heaven and – as it happened – the will of God. He automatically reacted to the visions, the way he reacted to any pain he’d ever endured: he purposely, although not without struggle, eased his body and mind against the agony, so that he wasn’t panicked and blocking access to his own source of light.

  It felt like he was being gutted alive.

  Nevertheless, the moment he accepted the pain, something deep inside him shifted, and he could suddenly focus on the light instead of the dark. He willed it to rise, grasped it with everything he had; wielded it like he wielded his own sword.

  The torture tearing his mind in two, eased, and he began to glow. It filled his body, and then it filled the room. Darkness submitted to it; so did pain.

  Oh, God, was that his own voice he could hear? He sounded like he was being flayed alive. This was more terrible than anything he’d ever channelled through his system before. He wondered if there’d be some kind of permanent scar on his soul, not that it mattered – it had enough scars. One more would hardly make a difference.

  His entire body seemed to vibrate, or so he thought at first. It took him a moment to realise the earth was giving off little tremors, but he couldn’t think any further on that, because he was sitting in the centre of himself, at one with some meditative state as he filtered out every thread of darkness he could find. He wasn’t sure where it was all coming from – not still Mary, he was certain – but he opened himself up to be the cleansing vessel it all went through.

  It was hard to tell exactly how long he sat there, glowing and purging, glowing and purging, but eventually, there was only li
ght. He took in a deep breath – his centre of gravity automatically shifting – opened his eyes and started at the sight of the angel he loved, parked on the floor, on the other side of the room.

  She stared at him wildly, cheeks flushed, with wide, wet eyes.

  Oh, no. He’d hurt her somehow. “Mary…” He made his way towards her, but she backed up against the wall behind her and shook her head.

  “What’s wrong?” Fear gripped him. Then he noticed her wings.

  They were white.

  “Oh, Christ,” he heard himself say, completely stunned.

  “I feel different,” she whispered, her voice quavering. “Lighter, and … I didn’t realise how much pain there was before – inside me – but now…

  “I could feel the nightmare coming, though I wasn’t asleep. But before it could take hold, I felt it seep through me, through my blood – into you. All of it … everything there was … everything I’ve ever seen and felt…” And before he could utter a word, she was in front of him, taking his face in her hands, dropping butterfly kisses all over it… “M’angeal … m’angeal, don’t you realise what you’ve just done? You’ve taken all sin from the world.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  As Elena stood in the doorway to the spare bedroom, watching her aged mum’s chest rise and fall, she couldn’t decide which was louder: the pounding of the rain, or the ticking of the grandfather clock all the way downstairs, in the hallway.

  Her mother was still asleep.

  Pueblo had gone two hours ago, leaving Amy in a state, Paul (she couldn’t get used to calling him that) restless, Katarra strangely silent, and Karl and herself at a loss as to what to do about anything.

  Amy and Paul had since told them about what had happened with the Dessec and their shaman, and filled them in about the pregnancy, which, of course, was the biggest shocker of all. Not the fact that she was pregnant, but the fact that the baby genetically had two fathers. Oh – and that it seemed to be some kind of fairy messiah created to herald in the apocalypse. That hadn’t been in any of the prophecies, but it wasn’t like Karl had access to fairy scrolls, just the angelic ones.

  Shit! Double shit and triple shit…

  Karl’s warm hand came to rest on the back of her neck. “Darling, what are you thinking?” The stress was obvious in his voice.

  “Nothing intelligent. How’s Amy?”

  “She left five minutes ago.”

  “What?”

  “She insisted, much to your grandfather’s disgruntlement. He tried to talk her out of it until his face turned the same shade as his neck.”

  She winced, remembering the bruising Pueblo had left there.

  “I healed it,” he added.

  Her grimace must have been obvious.

  “Anyway, he didn’t win the argument. Amy headed home, and Paul’s gone for a walk to clear his head, although I suspect he’s really gone to watch over Amy.” Karl wrapped his arms around her waist, and they both fell silent staring at her mum.

  After a while, Karl spoke. “He wanted to see her. I said no.”

  Elena squeezed his hands. “Thank you.”

  “But he’ll need to sooner or later, Elena. She’s his daughter. I told him it had to be her choice.”

  “How was he with that?”

  “He agreed. I honestly don’t think he’s here to cause trouble.”

  “Well, he sort of has, don’t you think?”

  “Unintentionally, maybe. But he did save Amy’s life, and the Dessec will be back.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’m worried, Elena. Jumping into dimensions with a plan is one thing, but if armies of demons and shamans come at us, I don’t know how we’re going to defend ourselves.”

  “Gwain said every Tom, Dick and Harry would be breaking down the door trying to get at the Pen. I guess now they’ll be trying to get at the baby too…”

  “Speaking of Gwain, I think I sensed him. It was only for a fraction of a second, and he felt … different somehow, but I think it was him. I lost concentration and couldn’t regain the connection. I swear, Elena, I felt an earthquake soon after Pueblo stormed out of here.”

  She nodded. “Me too, and I felt one earlier, before we went into the Shanka world.”

  “Something big’s happening. I also feel … weird; lighter or something.”

  “I had the same thing – it hit me about half an hour ago. I kind of just thought it was me reacting to everything that’s happened. But you’re right, that sense of feeling lighter – it’s still with me.”

  She turned to face him, and rested her head against his chest. She wondered if she’d have to wait one minute, or five, to hear his heartbeat. “Do you think this is it? The beginning of the apocalypse?”

  “If we consider the earth’s been rumbling, a messiah’s been conceived, and that Gwain – who may be the one to trigger the apocalypse – is back … it’s looking very likely.”

  A shiver ran through her, and Karl tightened his arms around her.

  “Do you think an apocalypse can be a good thing?”

  “If I get rid of my fear and just take everything at face value, then there’s no reason why not. Even the word ‘apocalypse’ just means ‘to reveal’ – it signals a revelation. Maybe what’s really happening, is we’re standing at the very edge of one era, waiting to topple into another. The hard part will be adapting to all that the change will bring.”

  Elena glanced up at him, taking in his words. “If you get rid of your fear? You know, I never look at you as someone who’s afraid.”

  “That’s because every time you look at me, I’m looking right back, and the only time I’m not afraid, is when I see you. And I do see you, Elena. I see everything you’ve been through, from so young – how you struggled through it; how you never let it destroy your hope and faith – and I’m afraid of nothing.”

  “Wow,” she whispered, swallowing the lump in her throat. And then she grinned. “Have we always been this soppy?”

  Karl smiled. “I think it’s exaggerated by the end of the world.”

  “Elena…”

  Oh, God… “Mum!” She darted into the room and took her mother’s hand as gently as she could, despite her overwhelming need to throw her arms around her. She looked so frail. Her mum may have been a stranger to her most of her life, but she’d never been frail. “How are you feeling?”

  The whites of her eyes were tinged yellow, and her voice came out hoarse. “A little wrecked, darling.”

  “I’ve got water here for you. Can you sit up a bit?”

  She helped her up against the cushions, then handed her the glass that was sitting on the nightstand, but her wrinkled hands were shaking, so Elena held it up to her lips for her.

  After a couple of sips, she’d had enough.

  Elena placed the glass back, and smoothed her white hair away from her face. “You’re safe now.”

  “My soul is saved, thanks to you.” She squeezed her hand back. “To die in the Shanka world, would have meant to have my soul reside there forever, always in shadow.”

  “Mum, you’re not going to die. We’ll find a way to—”

  “No, Elena.”

  No? “A number of us just risked our lives to save you, if you think—”

  “You have saved me, I’ve already told you.”

  Karl came up behind her. “Mrs Green,” he smiled.

  She returned his smile with a genuine one of her own. “Boy.”

  He chuckled. “I hope you understand that none of us are prepared to let you go that quickly.”

  “Evidently.”

  “Mum,” said Elena, blinking back tears. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t get to you sooner.”

  “Elena, sweetheart, that you came at all after everything I’ve kept from you…”

  “Of course I would – how could I not? I love you.”

  “I love you, too, baby girl.”

  “Look at what they did to you.”

  “I could have been treated worse. The Shanka have
ways of making things … pleasurable.” The grimness behind her smile did nothing to make Elena feel better. In fact, she wanted to rip her own skin off. How could she be related to these monsters?

  “I tried to heal you when you were sleeping. I couldn’t. Nathaniel told me that a Shanka could give back what another had taken, but … several Shanka have been taking your life, not just one. I did what I could, but we’ll find another way.”

  Her mother contemplated her for a minute, then turned to address Karl. “Do you think you could give me a minute with my daughter?”

  “Of course.”

  He bent down to kiss Elena. “Just call me if you need me,” he said softly, in her ear.

  “I will.”

  “Glad to have you back, Mrs Green.”

  “Thank you, Karl … for everything.”

  He paused a second, nodded, then left the room.

  Her mum brought her hand up to her lips and kissed it. “I’m so glad you’re happy, Elena. I didn’t know if you ever would be. I’ve always wondered whether keeping you was the act of a selfish mother, not willing to give up her daughter, when she knew all the hardships she would have to put her through.”

  “Oh, Mum, it’s all forgiven. You’ve had hardships; we’ve all had hardships.” Her grandfather came to mind, and irritated, she shook him away. Instead, she remembered what Karl had told her about sensing Gwain. “We need to get hold of Gwain. I think he can help you. He could—”

  “No.” And that was a definite don’t-argue-with-me tone.

  “But—”

  “Gwain is a man with his own path. You are not to call him. Even if he were here I would never let him give any more of himself for me.”

  “Mum—”

  “He has made enough sacrifices, Elena.”

  She paused, and studied her mum. “What is it with you and Gwain? You didn’t write about him in your diary. Were you together?”