Sacrifice

by Heather McCollum

  “No,” she answered, her voice a whisper in the rosy glow of firelight that raked along their silhouettes.

  Drustan came so close, she could imagine the feel of his chest rubbing against her front.

  “You are cold,” he said and stepped around her to grab her fallen cape. He set it over her shoulders. Only then did she realize that she’d stood before him in only her thin, white chemise, her nipples taut and evident through the fabric.

  Anna clasped the blue wool in front, covering herself. “I should go.”

  Drustan set his hand on her shoulder, an anchor for her in the swirl of sensations flooding her body. “It is dark, cold, and noisy out there.” The chuckle was gone from his voice. He grabbed her hand and led her toward his bed.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, her legs stiffening like thick tree branches. Had he read the illicit desire in her eyes?

  He let her fingers slide from his hand. “You can sleep here. I will lie by the fire.”

  “In your room, alone, during the night?” she asked though her legs returned to normal.

  “It is almost dawn. Sleep for a few hours and then go back. I’ve already had most of the night in quiet while you have suffered.”

  “You are still teasing,” she accused.

  A grin spread on his face, but he didn’t answer.

  Her frown pinched her lips. She shouldn’t stay. Not that she didn’t trust him, which she realized she did since he’d obviously saved her from the horde of demons outside his house. But could she trust herself not to encourage him?

  “Stay,” he said. “I would not see you stumbling around a frosty hall, looking for a vacant bed when there is a warm one here.”

  She swallowed. “A warm bed here?”

  “My body heat lingers in the linens and the fire will burn as long as I will it.” He reached toward her face, catching an errant curl to tuck behind her ear. “I would see you warm and comfortable, Anna. You are safe here.”

  He had such beautiful eyes, especially when shed of their haunted sadness. They were so mesmerizing that she could almost believe him. His complete focus remained on her. “As you’ve seen,” he said, “I can control my needs.” He took a slight step back and crossed his arms over his muscular chest. “Although you greatly test my restraints.”

  This torture, he felt it, too. The admission erupted in Anna like molten lava. Drustan’s height and broad shoulders seemed even larger when contained within a room, a room where they stood alone, nearly naked. It was all sorts of improper, but then Anna had always been rash or else she would have married young like their father had proclaimed she must. And now that she’d married off Patricia, Anna could surrender to some of her own wants. And right now, she wanted to feel the warmth of Drustan’s skin.

  She leaned forward and rested her hands on his bare shoulders. He was warm. She could smell the hint of soap clinging to him. She smoothed her fingers down his arms, and watched his muscles tense under her light touch. “Societal dictates are like prison bars,” she said softly. “Sometimes…I wish I could escape.”

  He was so close, his hard body and clean, heated smell. She looked up and met his piercing gaze. Everything drew her in, but she stood firm, fighting against the rush of sensation. Flutters danced in her stomach as the ache tightened below and goosebumps tickled across her chest. Surely this was wrong, this pull between them.

  “’Tis one reason for living outside of society.” His fingers caught one of the curls that no-doubt looped haphazardly about her head. He ran the back of his hand down her cheek. “So soft.” His fingers captured her chin and he rubbed the pad of his thumb over her lower lip. “Exquisite.”

  The simple touch eviscerated her thoughts of impropriety. “You’ve dreamt of me,” she said. Their voices were low, just a shade above a whisper as if volume would destroy the moment, or make it too real. Anna felt caught between dreams and reality, hovering where she could act on the fire within.

  Drustan nodded. “All my life.” His hands slid around her back. He gently tugged her against him, and Anna’s eyes closed as she absorbed the cloak of his heat. She lay her face along his chest and listened to the deep thud of his heart.

  He pulled back slightly and tipped her chin up with one bent finger. Unhurriedly, he lowered, waiting to see if she would turn away, but she didn’t. She couldn’t.

  His lips were just as warm as his hands as they slanted against her chilled mouth. Fire scorched inside Anna as he bent over her frame, engulfing her completely. She felt the heavy weight of her cape slide again from her shoulders to puddle around her slippers. She raised high on her toes, bowing into him. Drustan’s hand found her hair, gingerly raking through it, releasing the pins. Anna’s resolve released bit by bit with every pin-plink on the wood floor. Any thoughts of proper decorum lay in disarray around her just like her curls.

  The kiss slanted. Drustan tentatively touched his tongue to her lips. They parted as if the light pressure had been a key, allowing him to slip inside and truly taste her. A low moan grew inside Anna until it seeped out between them. Her heart pounded beneath her breastbone with a heady tempo. She found her fingers curling into Drustan’s soft, clean hair as they moved their mouths as one, joining, breathing, tasting.

  Surrender. She felt the word in every part of her. She would surrender the starch dictates of society to succumb to this feeling, this man. Her goals, her structure, her needs to forge a path through this world. All incinerated under this heat. The realization startled her and she pulled back, eyes wide in the face of Drustan’s intense beauty. “I…I can’t.” She shook her head like a fragile bird.

  Drustan’s breathing seemed as ragged as her own. The small proof that she had the power to affect him nearly made her reconsider. She leaned back in.

  “You are right,” Drustan said before she met his lips. Sorrow seeped in along his face, etching into the lines where his brows furrowed. “I have dreamt of you so long, of touching you.” He dropped his hold on her and stepped back. In a very masculine gesture he adjusted the obvious bulge below his belt line, and Anna’s mouth felt dry as dust. He grabbed up a shirt to toss over his head. “But you are real, and I won’t take advantage.”

  “Drustan,” she said.

  “You sleep. I have need for frozen air.” He stepped to the door.

  Cold replaced Drustan’s warmth and Anna shivered. “Drustan?”

  He paused, half out into the dark hall to look back at her.

  “Was it as good as your dreams?” she whispered.

  A slow grin spread across his chiseled jaw line. “Anna. ’Twas sweeter than any dream.” And then he and his warmth disappeared into the night.

  ****

  “Anna?”

  “She’s not awake yet,” a feminine voice hushed.

  Anna rolled over, pushing her face into the pillow, unwilling to give up the comfortable heat surrounding her nor the last vestiges of the dream she’d been having. The down pillow had cradled Drustan’s head and gave off his scent. Anna could have curled right around it and floated back into her fantasy when she suddenly remembered where she was. She turned back over, eyes blinking, to see Matilda and Alicia staring down at her in the bed. In Drustan’s bed.

  They both smiled. “Good morning,” Matilda said and frowned, shaking her head. “I am so sorry about last night.”

  “Last night?” Anna asked. Last night. Last night. What happened last night? Patricia and William’s lurid loving or her kissing Drustan while nearly naked? To which of the devastatingly embarrassing incidents was Matilda referring?

  Alicia shook her head too. “You were so brave. The noise alone would have sent me screaming.”

  Anna’s gaze snapped from face to face. They must be talking of Patricia and William.

  “The scratching and squealing,” Alicia continued and gave a dramatic shiver.

  Anna focused on the younger of William’s nieces. “I…don’t know if there was scratching actually…” she trailed off. “It was mo
re thumping.”

  Matilda gasped. “They must have been really going at it.”

  Anna thought her ability to blush would have been fully used up the previous night, yet another rush of heat burned in her cheeks.

  “How many were there?” Alicia asked.

  Anna’s gaze switched between the sisters. “Uhh…just the two of them…”

  “They must have been chasing each other,” Alicia added with a nod. “Did you catch a sight of them?”

  Anna shook her head slowly and narrowed her eyes. “Chasing?”

  “The rats who chased you from your room last night,” Matilda said and propped hands on her hips. “We will set several of our best mousers in there right away, but I can certainly understand why you’d want to relocate after that.”

  “Such luck for Mr. MacDruce to be walking to the stairs at the moment you were without a room,” Alicia said. “And so nice of him to give you his before he left.”

  “Yes, rats,” Anna said with a slow nod and halted. “Left? Drustan, Mr. MacDruce left Kylkern?” She threw the blanket back and shivered as her toes sought her slippers. She grabbed her wrap off the end of the bed.

  Matilda pushed open the heavy drapes hiding the windows. “He left at dawn, right after the terrible lightning and thunder. Didn’t you hear it?”

  “No. Patricia says I sleep through storms.” Anna looked at the sun shining beyond the glass. “It doesn’t look like it’s rainy.”

  Alicia met her at the window. “It isn’t. Never did. That’s the strange thing.” Alicia shrugged. “The lightning hit a ways off, but the thunder cracked and then rumbled. Mr. MacDruce left right after that. Said he would return with fresh clothing.”

  He would return. Anna ignored the wash of relief percolating through her stomach.

  “I would like to work with him when he returns,” Matilda said. “Help him focus that power he has.” She shook her head. “To not be able to touch another living soul.”

  “Except for Anna,” Alicia reminded them. As if Anna could forget.

  ****

  Drustan ignored the dirt devils churning up the leaves in spots around him. He kept his pace artificially sedate as he strode toward his house in the trees. His senses told him exactly where each of the demonic souls drifted within range.

  “Drustan,” Semiazaz called to his back as Drustan levitated himself up to the surrounding deck. He turned to look at the disembodied image of the warlock hovering level with him. Drustan’s wards prevented the demons or their leader from entering his home, but they liked to encroach, pretending the boundary was a mere fence over which to step.

  “Yes?”

  “This is how you repay me, repay us, for harboring you safely all these years? Listening to your troubles, protecting you from harm?” Semiazaz’s voice boomed with thunder around them. An easy trick of the sound waves bouncing off the clouds. It did nothing but further annoy Drustan.

  They’d fumed and stormed around him this morning like deadly, pouting children, threatening to strike lightning on the hapless village if he didn’t leave Kylkern. Drustan drew them out on the moor before bending the space between the castle and his tree house in the north woods, reducing a walk of hours into minutes.

  “And what exactly is it that I’ve done?” he asked.

  “Living in Drakkina’s castle, conversing with her disciples, neglecting your preparation for the final battle.”

  “The castle belongs to the Macleans, not the witch. I have seen her in it, but by no means does she control it or the people there.”

  “She’s warded it with her dragonfly marks, chiseled in the very stones that make up its walls. We cannot enter or speak to you when you reside within.”

  Yet Drustan could enter the fortress. He’d felt the zing of magic when he’d touched the stone with Drakkina’s mark cut into it, but it hadn’t kept him out. Perhaps his soul wasn’t as dark as he thought. Or the witch wasn’t as strong as Semiazaz had made her out to be.

  “You do not enter my house either. That does not make me a traitor. William Maclean and his people are definitely not the witch’s disciples. And how exactly am I not preparing for the final battle?”

  The other twelve appeared behind Semiazaz to leer at Drustan. “You are not spending time with us, devising plans of attack, strategy,” Semiazaz said.

  Drustan smoothed his face into boredom despite his rising anger. They forgot themselves. Forgot who he was, what he could do. Drustan stared into the wizard’s dark eyes, both familiar and haughty.

  “I am the son of Gilla, son of Druce,” Drustan said, his voice flat and soft while the tempest of anger churned in his gut, magic flaring out from the stone within. “Have you forgotten what that means, Semiazaz?” He shifted his eyes to his brethren, their horns, their bare, sinuous bodies suddenly grotesque to him. “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

  Bechard roared, gnashing his six-inch teeth and swinging his imagined war hammer. “You are a human,” he ground out. “Mortal and vulnerable, yet we follow you.”

  Erubus’s curling horns vibrated with suppressed violence where he floated next to Bechard. He’d been one of the two who had chased Drustan down as a babe, yet his thoughts turned to Drustan’s death. Same with his brother, Elathan, where he flapped his great black wings on the other side of Bechard. Even faithful Bast pouted and looked at her pointed nails, barely putting in enough effort to stay visible.

  Dark magic spanned out before Drustan, churning and fuming with thoughts of mutiny, Drustan’s vulnerable mortal form, and open vengeance. Only Semiazaz’s mind remained clear of revolt, but that had little to do with loyalty to Drustan. Semiazaz had seen every prophecy regarding the outcome of the final battle. Without Drustan, they would fail to win against the combined magic of Drustan’s sisters.

  Semiazaz sighed. His lips barely moved, yet his voice penetrated the cacophony. “We follow Lord Drustan for the prophecies predict that we will die without him.”

  “Prophecies that only you interpret,” Troglodytarum, the dwarf-like demon, called where he watched next to Megaira, her serpent hair coiling tightly around her face like undulating curls.

  The particles which made up Semiazaz’s appearance sank into the wizard’s chest, turning him inside out until he looked as if he’d simply pivoted around to meet the demons’ fiery gazes. “I am schooled in prophecies and their interpretation. You are not. We have been through this for centuries.” Semiazaz’s gaze swept the group. “You have no other choice. Or would you rather chase after Gilla’s daughters blindly?”

  Bechard roared as usual, joined by his mate Gehenna. Bast flicked her tail while Daria shook her head, her wings curling behind her. Elathan and Erubrus kept their positions by Bechard, ready to do as the Tempest demon decided. Bechard was definitely the next in line for leadership and would no doubt try to kill Drustan if given the chance. Trill hovered closer to Bast, his narrowed eyes and pointed chin giving him a malicious, devil appearance. He, too, seemed to wait for Bechard’s challenge.

  Drustan leaned against his house with arms crossed over his chest, waiting to see how the latest squabble would play out. He’d grown up around the querulous group, had long ago learned to wait until the steam cleared and Semiazaz regained order. But this time the stakes were higher. This time they knew Anna existed.

  Drustan’s magic scanned the dark thoughts of the mass. The typical flitting images of Drustan’s bloody death faded while a new image sharpened into crystalline focus, a face with beautifully intelligent green eyes. One whose continued life might tip the prophecy scale toward their doom.

  Drustan slammed his booted heel into the pine siding to push away from the house. “You forget yourselves,” he said, words bouncing off the mist, amplified by his magic so that every demon could hear his words in the depths of their minds. “I am your king, your lord.”

  Semiazaz turned, his obsidian orbs widening. Drustan had never before taken the role of king without prompting.

  Drustan stood
at the edge of his deck, fists at his sides, his anger igniting the radiating power within him like sparks running along the lit fuse of dynamite. “You forget what I am.”

  “You are mortal and weak,” Bechard said, his maw stretching to show dripping fangs. He rotated his head in wide sweeps as if his fearsome appearance could intimidate Drustan.

  The energy Bechard used to create his threatening look was wasted on Drustan. Drustan let the swell of magic rush up through him, filling him with such energy that his clothing crackled, unable to withstand the electrical charge. They disintegrated, leaving him naked, his human body barely able to contain all that he was, all the power he’d been gifted by his father and mother through his birth.

  “Do I look weak to you?” Drustan roared.

  “You look human,” the Tempest demon retorted, though a bit of the strength had faded from his tone.

  “One does not equate to the other,” Drustan said and raised his arms to the sides. A great wind tossed the thick tree branches. His magic heated and cooled the air, causing electrical charges to stab at the ground amongst the trees. With feet braced apart and his muscles taut, Drustan forced his magic to contract inward into a tightening circle around the demons, like a cinched sack cupping a bed of vipers.

  Bast cursed as Drustan’s power shoved her forward into Trill. Her visual body blinked out yet her dark spirit remained within Drustan’s circle. Trill grunted and tried to hold his ground, but Drustan’s magic, fed by his anger, overpowered him.

  “You will die, human,” Bechard said and began to spin his battle hammer.

  With a parallel thought, Drustan scattered the energy the demon used to create his weapon. Bechard’s hand grasped nothing but heated air. His great wings framed the muscular image he liked to portray, but with open lips and wide eyes, the threat he presented was reduced to a tedious annoyance.

  Drustan pressed his cupped hands closer, inch by inch, his magic shoving and pressing the demons together. Even the two who were splintered off, but still tied to Semiazaz, were forced into a tight ball with their brethren. Megaira’s serpents hissed and struck at Gehenna and Daria as they tried desperately not to touch her energy. Troglodytarum waddled to stand between Elathan’s legs. The lesser demons stayed behind, condensing their energies to occupy as little space as possible. Semiazaz was forced to back into Bechard, all of them shrinking in size under Drustan’s magic.