Wicked Blood (Dark Fae Hollows)

by Margo Bond Collins

  Sorin still stared at me, shaking his head, terror in his eyes as he glanced at Gypsy floating in the air above us. I could see part of her now, an outline of her head thrown back in ecstasy as she soaked up the last of the crackling power of the death magic surrounding us.

  “Oh, to hell with it,” I whispered. I couldn’t explain it. I had to show him.

  Standing up on my tiptoes, I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulled his head down to mine, and launched myself at him with an open mouth kiss that was hotter than I had ever anticipated it could possibly be. My tongue tangled with Sorin’s, pulling it into my mouth, dancing lightly over his lips as I used it to convince him.

  When I pulled away, he gazed into my eyes intently, then nodded, a heat rising in his eyes. I squeezed his hands and began.

  “We surround ourselves with the healing power of love,” I chanted, using the prayer Maicǎ and I had always invoked at the beginning of our readings. “We ask protection, safety, and light.” Sorin’s hands grew hot in mine, still a sign that my own magic was beginning to ramp up—now also a sign that he was with me in this, in every way. “We beg protection from all that would do us harm.”

  Throughout the chamber, fires broke out where Gypsy’s magic proved too hot. The room burned. But immediately around us, a circle of warm light seemed to form a cone around us. Outside the circle, nothing moved.

  As long as we stayed together in here, we were safe. I planted another hot kiss against his mouth. This time when I pulled away, I slid my pants and panties down, and then kicked my shoes off, letting my clothes fall to the foot of the broken altar. I ran my hands along the muscles of his stomach, concentrating on the feel of him, watched as his cock jumped in response to my touch.

  When I was fully naked, I stepped up close, my heart pounding. But then Sorin took over, running his hands down my sides and bending over to take my breast in his mouth. The heat of him seared me, and I moaned, dropping my head backward in a movement that echoes Gypsy’s of a moment before—but I don’t care. The hot tide of desire is rising in me along with the magic, and I don’t want Sorin to stop.

  But this wasn’t enough. Something was missing. Closing my eyes, I imagined the cards as I had laid them out when Sorin had fought Sanda. That was it. Inhaling deeply, I called their magic to me and launched myself into him.

  I fell into the Vision, slipping into Sorin’s mind again. It became easier every time I did it and I found myself wondering if someday, I would switch back and forth between us seamlessly, without any effort at all.

  Maybe I would even forget which of us was which. Could I lose myself in him that much?

  I can’t stand to see her hurt. His thought jarred against my own. I want to make her scream in joy.

  A shiver threaded through me, sending desire licking along all my nerves.

  The Vision was different this time—I held part of myself back. And I felt it the instant our senses doubled, feeling Sorin rolling my breast around in his mouth as both the hardening of the nipple as if it were against my own tongue and as the sudden spate of electric shocks sparking out to the center of my own being.

  And then I was lost to the double sensations of myself and him, drowning in the creative heat of learning what Sorin liked best, and what I liked best with Sorin.

  His lips’ movements against my breast were perfect, gentle and steady until he slipped his hands under my knees and picked me up, only to settle me onto his lap as he sat on the hard floor. I was surprised to see that the circle of light encompassing us doesn’t include any of the shards of marble.

  Wrapping my legs around his waist, Sorin pulled my mouth down to his, and the sensation of both sides of our kiss sent molten heat throbbing through me. With a groan into my mouth, he pushed up into me. I was not quite ready for that, but it felt so good—and from the way he felt me around him, I realized how hot and wet and ready I was.

  His movements into me became more urgent, and his cock thickened. I could sense his craving for me, and it drove me into him—or him into me, I could no longer tell. The magic swirled around us in pounding radiance, building higher and higher as we moved back and forth through one another.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gypsy drift toward the floor, her dark light dimming, but not gone.

  This still isn’t enough. And she is coming for us.

  The cards around us now shimmered with a magical light different from any I had seen before, pale but warm, almost golden—the opposite of Gypsy. As Sorin wrapped his arms around me and gathered me close, I poured my knowledge into him and he responded with closed fluttering eyelids.

  “Yes.” I wasn’t sure who said it. And it didn’t matter.

  I gathered the gold light in one hand as I rocked back and forth atop him and sent it, like a rope, hurtling toward Gypsy. It twined around her, tied her to us, pulled her closer.

  As I dragged her toward us, I grew tight around Sorin, squeezing him, returning his desire with my own. Pleasure washed over me in waves and I cried out, my nails digging into his back.

  I managed to break free from our connection for a moment, long enough to catch my breath. Sorin held me tight against him, quivering with his determination not to come too soon.

  “Ready?” I whispered. He nodded, and I dropped the barrier of light protecting us long enough to pull Gypsy inside, then, with a flick of my hands toward my cards, sent it soaring skyward again, leaving the three of us inside its protective circle. I needn’t have bothered, though—the magic holding us safe also seemed to be holding us outside of time. The combatants outside roared into motion for a fraction of a second while the wall was down, then froze again.

  She was beautiful, her porcelain skin fragile against the black of her hair and the darker shimmer of power from inside her.

  “This won’t work,” she said, her voice silky in its blackness.

  But with a surge of magic, I sent our intertwined consciousness into her. Brought her into us.

  Sorin’s lips met mine in a heated kiss, and soon, his hand was buried in my hair while his other arm pulled me closer. I gasped as I lowered myself onto him again, as I lost myself to the passion—and lost Gypsy, too. Their bodies moved together in unison, intuitively. Or maybe ours did.

  I lost track of who was where. Sorin flipped us onto our back, taking control and pinning me to the ground. Something about the way Gypsy’s voice rang out told him he was doing something right. He delighted in this, wanting desperately to just watch her, to just relish in the fact that he was the one prying these sounds from my body.

  They fought each other for control, Gypsy to work her way back on top of him and failing each time, until eventually I wrapped my legs tightly around his waist. Gypsy’s enraptured moans grew in desperation, in urgency. Sorin could feel my hot breath on his ear as I leaned up and whispered into his ear. “Harder.”

  “I want you,” Gypsy whispered. Or maybe Sorin or I did.

  His lips returned to hers, and they were kissing again, his mouth hot against mine. Passionate. We struggled to catch our breath.

  My head swam.

  Sorin collapsed on me, but managed to keep from crushing me. He felt so right, so strong, against us, on us, over us, protecting me and caressing her. His cock thickened as he filled me—or her—and then he was crying out, too, and gasping.

  I’ll never really know if in the end, she was there with us in mind as well as in body, twining herself around us as Sorin slipped from me and slid into her, or from her into me. I couldn’t tell us apart any longer. But she came when I did, crying out in life-affirming pleasure that sent the last of the black light of the corrupt magic pouring out of her and back into the dark tomb she’d arisen from.

  In that moment, Bucharest healed.

  Chapter 24

  At least, I believed it had healed—for a little while, anyway. Two months later, Sorin and I stood clutching each other’s hands, attempting to remain anonymous in the crowd surging up against the foot of a gallows.
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  When Bucharest’s residents—those who’d survived what was being called The Darkest Night—had returned to their homes, the Human-Fae Council had acted to restore order to the city. Part of that restoration had included holding trials of those who had participated in turning that night so dark.

  Sorin and I had brought charges against those we knew to have participated—the vampires, Sanda, Councilman Bratu and his henchman, the one who had murdered Maicǎ. Of all those, only Bratu’s thug had been found guilty.

  I’d thought myself so worldly. I was beginning to see that I barely knew Gypsy Hollow at all.

  “It’s our nature,” Gypsy had told me sadly after the trials. “Human and Fae both. My sisters and I hoped, with our sacrifices, to make the worlds small enough to save the best of our kinds.” She stared off over the city from the balcony of the winged Fae’s tower, where she had retreated, unwilling to take on any formal leadership role when the Council began restoring order. “But perhaps my dark dreams weren’t entirely wrongheaded,” she continued. “Then I wanted to crack the walls between the Hollows, to take them over.”

  “And now?” I kept my voice low.

  “Now I sometimes wonder if maybe we would be better off letting the all the Hollows, all the world, burn itself down together, as it was meant to do originally.”

  I suspected that not all of Gypsy’s darkness had evaporated—or maybe her black melancholy was an inevitable result of holding so much corrupted magic inside herself for so many years as she slept and dreamt.

  Sorin and I were invited to join the winged Fae for a meal after the execution. Perhaps it spoke to my own internal darkness that I wanted to see at least one person hang for Maicǎ’s death and then attend a party.

  Was that who I wanted to be?

  As if he’d been reading my mind, Sorin leaned down to whisper, “We don’t have to stay if it bothers you.”

  I squeezed his hand and glanced up at him. “I don’t know.”

  “If you want to leave, just say so. They’re about to begin.”

  His intuition worried me, even when, like now, it meant he understood me perfectly. I wasn’t sure if it was a residue of the magic I’d used to bind us to one another and to Gypsy. Those bonds were fading, leaving only natural ties of affection behind.

  I think.

  When I turned my attention back to the gallows, I discovered Councilman Bratu watching me, smirking. So I didn’t leave—but I didn’t watch, either. Instead, I held Bratu’s gaze through the hanging.

  You’re next, I promised him silently. I didn’t know when or how, but one way or another, I would make certain he paid for Maicǎ’s murder.

  When his bodyguard jerked against the end of the rope, Bratu fought to keep his expression even, but he paled at the expression in my eyes.

  “Let’s go,” Sorin said as soon as it was over. I nodded and followed him away from the courtyard, musing as we wended our way toward the tower.

  “After we see Gypsy,” I said slowly, “I want to go home.” Back to Maicǎ’s tea shop, to all that was left of my life from before—but a home that I now shared with Sorin, who’d left the Lynx Chain rather than remain in a group where Ciprian still valued Sanda’s input.

  “But?” Sorin asked, still attuned to me.

  “But before we head home, I want to talk to Gypsy about what it would take to open doors to other Hollows.” Sorin paused for a moment, nodded, and kept walking.

  As we turned onto the street that would lead us into the rest of the city, he tucked me in close to him. “You thinking of saving the entire Old Earth now?”

  I laughed. “Maybe.” My voice dropped. “Or maybe Gypsy’s right—maybe it all deserves to burn.”

  Sorin stopped and pulled us up against the wall outside another enclosure. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  I considered. What would it be like if we ever did manage to crack open the walls between the Hollows? What would our world be like then? Could I live in a world full of places like Gypsy Hollow, with all its corruption and evil?

  But also with all its good, its innkeepers and hairdressers and flying Fae and lynx-shifters who joined in the fight on the side of right, despite their leader’s wishes.

  “No.” I drew the word out slowly. “I guess I don’t really think it can be that bad.”

  “Good.” Sorin nodded decisively. “Because I’m not on board with any plan that ends with you burning the world. I don’t want either of us to end up as a Wicked Blood. Not here, and not in any other Hollow, either.” He leaned in and brushed his lips against mine, murmuring his words between kisses. “But promise to save the world, and I’ll be right there with you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He kissed me long and hard. “I’m all in.”

  “Okay, then. Let’s go save the world.”

  The End

  .* * *

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  About the Authors

  NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, and WALL STREET JOURNAL bestselling author Margo Bond Collins is a former college English professor who, tired of explaining the difference between "hanged" and "hung," turned to writing romance novels instead. (Sometimes her heroines kill monsters, too.)

  Read More from Margo Bond Collins: https://www.amazon.com/Margo-Bond-Collins/e/B00EOU9DEG/

  www.MargoBondCollins.net

  NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, and WALL STREET JOURNAL bestselling author Rebecca Hamilton lives in Georgia with her husband and four kids, all of whom inspire her writing. Somewhere in between using magic to disappear booboos and sorcery to heal emotional wounds, she takes to her fictional worlds to see what perilous situations her characters will find themselves in next. Represented by Rossano Trentin of TZLA, Rebecca has been published internationally, in three languages.

  Read More from Rebecca Hamilton: https://www.amazon.com/Rebecca-Hamilton/e/B0072J4RS8/

  www.rebeccahamiltonbooks.com