Demons and DNA (Amplifier 1)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  A sliver of desire slipped through me, blooming at my lips and curling down, deeply down, to awaken in my stomach. I relaxed into it, sighing. Releasing his hand so I could wrap both of my hands around his face, I kissed him back. Deeply. Thoroughly. Drinking him in without reservation. Just this once, unfettered, with the witch’s power flowing from me to him instead of my own.

  A wave of desire crashed over me. His need, picked up by my empathy. And my need. It wiped away all reason, leaving only a gathering warmth in my chest, filtering down through my stomach, pooling between my legs.

  “Well, that sucks.” Daniel sighed behind me.

  Christopher laughed.

  Aiden broke the kiss, pressing his forehead to mine and smiling. “Perhaps somewhere a little more private?”

  I returned his smile, willing to play along and believe for just a moment that it could be that easy between us. That we could slaughter a couple of dozen demons, feed a black witch to a greater demon, then share a world-ending kiss.

  But I knew, even deeper down than the desire warming my loins, that by the time we made it out of the forest, the rest of the world would come crashing down on our heads. His father’s connection to the Collective. The revelations of my past. My inability to actually form any sort of functional relationship outside the Five.

  So I kissed Aiden a second time, giving him the last drops of Silver Pine’s power. A gift from my heart, even if I couldn’t give him myself.

  Daniel had patched Mark Calhoun with every runed bandage the sorcerer had on him, but he didn’t actually regain consciousness until we’d arrived back at the clearing where we’d left Becca and Jenni in coyote form. The weapons specialist’s magic was slowly knitting itself back together, but Daniel was concerned that I would shred it further if I amplified him too quickly or too intensely.

  The moon was high in the sky, casting the derelict hunting shed in deep shadow. Becca had obviously been contemplating starting a fire. She’d stacked up a small pile of dead wood in the pit but hadn’t lit it yet.

  “Oh thank fucking God,” she groaned as we crossed into the clearing. “I thought I was going to freeze to death out here.”

  Daniel set Calhoun down beside her. Aiden and Paisley paced the perimeter of the clearing in opposite directions, as if neither one trusted the other to make certain the area was secure. Still, knowing that Daniel had knocked out all the magical traps on our way in, I wasn’t concerned that anything was lying in wait for us.

  “I’m going to need a scotch,” Becca said. “On the rocks if all you have is crap, but neat if you have any of the good stuff.”

  I crouched down next to her, holding my hand out. “No alcohol at the house. But I can give you another sort of boost, sorcerer.”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” She laughed snarkily, cringing as she did so. She was obviously still hurt, hopefully not from internal bleeding. But she wrapped her hand around mine readily enough.

  I reached out for her magic, picking up her frustration and a hint of fear through our empathic connection. Then I slowly bolstered that magic. Just enough to help get the sorcerer on her feet, though I could carry her if needed, with Calhoun in Daniel’s charge.

  “Where’s Jenni?” I asked.

  Becca nodded over my shoulder with a twist of her lips. “Hiding.”

  I glanced back to see Christopher slowly advancing on the derelict hut with his hands raised.

  “Some complex,” Becca muttered. “I’ve never met a closeted shifter.”

  I didn’t respond, though I hadn’t either.

  “Socks,” Mark murmured, raising his hand to brush my arm but then falling short.

  “Jesus Christ!” Becca cried, as if she’d only just noticed how wounded Mark was. She started systematically checking every bandage that Daniel had slapped on her former commanding officer. “Why haven’t you …” She trailed off, dropping her gaze to the sigil carved into Mark’s chest. “Well, that’s going to scar.” She glanced over at me questioningly.

  “Mark?” I asked obligingly, though I didn’t like the idea of being bullied by Becca into offering to amplify anyone. “Daniel’s concerned I might hurt you, that your magic is still struggling to reassert itself. But now that you’re awake, do you want —”

  “Yes, please.” He sighed, closing his eyes and resting his head back against one of the stones edging the firepit.

  I reached for his hand, watching Aiden make another circle around the clearing as I sought out Mark’s magic, then amplified it as gently as possible with my own.

  Paisley bumped her head against Aiden’s hip as they passed. He smiled, running a hand across her head and down her back. She snorted offishly, but then turned around behind him, pacing alongside him now.

  “Socks?” Mark asked. “I’m sorry. You know we’d never …” He trailed off.

  I nodded, but I didn’t respond to whatever he thought he could leave unsaid.

  “We need to keep moving,” Daniel said, speaking to Christopher. “We need to get Becca and Mark back to the house and get a better look at their wounds.”

  “I know,” the clairvoyant murmured. He was hunkered outside the door to the shed now, reaching one hand into the dark.

  “So if you don’t have any scotch at home, Socks,” Becca asked, resting her hand possessively on Mark’s arm the moment I released him. “What do you have to soothe us?”

  The sorcerer had fallen asleep, which was unusual after being amplified. But his chest rose and fell as he breathed deeply, so he appeared to be healing.

  “Tea,” I said. “All kinds of tea.”

  Becca twisted her lips. “Tea!”

  “I don’t need to share, Becca.”

  She snorted. “Have you got anything tasty to go with it?”

  I eyed her for a moment, not certain I was ready to forgive her for unwittingly helping Silver Pine get her hands on Christopher, and on Daniel. “Ginger snaps,” I said.

  “Yum.” Becca smiled at me tentatively.

  Though I wasn’t petty enough to withhold comfort food, I wasn’t quite ready to smile back. So I didn’t.

  A coyote finally slipped out of the shadows of the derelict hut. Jenni Raymond.

  She bumped her head under Christopher’s open palm, but then sidled away when he attempted to pet her. She pinned me with a baleful stare.

  Yeah, I got it. I was an awful person.

  “You want Becca or Mark?” Daniel asked, stepping up beside me.

  I glanced over at Aiden. He was watching me, his expression hooded. “Becca,” I said, already reaching to help the sorcerer to her feet.

  “I think I can walk,” she said, sliding her arm across my shoulder.

  “Not fast enough.” Daniel gathered Mark in his arms, lifting the taller man with some effort.

  Christopher stepped up, reaching for Becca wordlessly. Jenni was still in coyote form, tucked up at his heels. I took Mark from Daniel. I would move faster with him.

  We exited the clearing, Daniel and his flashlight in the lead.

  Chapter 12

  I gazed out the window of my sitting room, seeking out and finding Christopher in the garden, harvesting the last of the beefsteak tomatoes. I let my gaze wander out across the property toward the back fence. Aiden had been working on repairing the damage inflicted by the demon for a few days now. Daniel had fixed the front door and hung new doors in the kitchen, and had finished patching the damaged kitchen wall the day before. The kitchen and hallway now just needed another coat of paint.

  “He’s out front,” Fish said from the doorway behind me.

  I’d gotten so accustomed to having the nullifier in the house, and the constant muted hum from my blood tattoo, that he’d managed to sneak up on me.

  “The sorcerer,” he added, leaning on the doorframe casually though his arms were crossed. “Strengthening the northwest corner. Mark is helping him. For the cows.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Christopher has bought cows. From the n
eighbors. An adult female and some calves. Apparently, the Wilsons were happy to have the opportunity to expand their breeding pool without having to enlarge their own herd, and Christopher paid too much.”

  “Cows.”

  “Yes, cows. For Paisley. He said you wouldn’t let him get pigs. Something about them being intelligent.”

  I looked out the window again, watching Christopher. I was growing concerned about the clairvoyant. He’d been slipping in and out of the present again since the events of that night in the forest. Just momentary blips, but they were becoming more frequent. “I assumed he’d get goats next.”

  “The fence would need to be taller.”

  Silence fell between us. It wasn’t uncomfortable. But it wasn’t as comfortable as being in the house with just Christopher and Paisley.

  “So, the sorcerer. Is he staying?”

  I had no idea. I had barely been in the same room as Aiden for days — at least not without also being surrounded by three or four other people.

  After getting Mark and Becca home, we had decided they could heal on their own with a bit of help from me, and without the need to involve witches or other healers. Though I hadn’t been present for the transformation, Jenni Raymond had shifted into her human form and left the property before dawn. She hadn’t returned.

  Which was a relief, frankly. I wasn’t interested in whatever conversation she would try to force on me next. Presumably she’d be livid that I’d amplified her magic. Or she’d want another boost.

  Except for the Five, who had already had everything I had to give without question, other Adepts always seemed to want more power.

  I was thankful that Silver Pine hadn’t sacrificed Becca and Mark in order to quell me. I didn’t need any more blood on my hands. But every room in the house had been full for four days while everyone healed and dealt with repairs.

  “I’ll take your silence to mean you don’t know if he’s staying. But …”

  I turned to face Daniel. “But what?”

  He raised his hands. “You don’t need to bite my head off. You already know everything I’m going to say. It’s been running in your head for days.”

  It had been. A long list of all the reasons Aiden couldn’t stay, all the reasons I couldn’t ask him to stay.

  “You’ll never know for certain,” Daniel said softly. “If he wants you for you. You already know where you belong, Emma.”

  “With you?”

  He shrugged. “With me. But mostly with us. We could bring Bee and Zans here —”

  “No. And you are leaving. There are too many people in the house triggering Christopher.”

  “I saw. I see. But his magic will settle. It’ll adapt, grow.”

  I clenched my hands into fists. “You never fucking cared, Daniel. Never cared who you hurt, who you used. You’d have him burn up. You’d have his magic consume him.”

  “You’re wrong, Emma. I do give a shit. About you and Knox, and even the fucking demon dog. Lots of clairvoyants develop an immunity —”

  “He’s not lots of clairvoyants. Just like I’m not other amplifiers and you aren’t like other nullifiers! Those are just … labels. Easy labels they put on us.”

  He stepped forward, reaching for me.

  “No,” I said, steely. “I don’t give you permission.”

  He hesitated, chest heaving from some emotion, something more complicated than simple anger or frustration.

  It would have been so easy to close the space between us. To reach for him as I’d done when we were younger, slipping into his bed. Cold comfort in the dark.

  “I want … I want to be in the light,” I whispered. More for myself than him.

  “And hiding away here with Knox, keeping your distance from the sorcerer, is living in the light?”

  “It’s … home. It’s mine.”

  Daniel exhaled, the tension easing from his shoulders. “I see. Well, as always, I’ll be at your beck and call when you need me.”

  “I didn’t call you this time, Fish.”

  “No. You didn’t. But you needed me.”

  “Only because you brought Silver Pine to my doorstep.”

  He stared at me, every edge of his face hard. “I already apologized for that.”

  “Don’t do it again. Don’t bring your shit here.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  “Mark, Becca, and I will leave this afternoon.”

  I nodded.

  He turned back to the door, lightly kicking a black bag I hadn’t seen him drop. “For your trouble. And so you don’t need to be rescued by Knox again.” He walked away.

  The bag was filled with cash, of course. Guilt money. Presumably part or all of the fee Silver Pine had paid the nullifier to find me. Not that he’d known that was what he was doing for her. After Daniel had packed and gone downstairs, I dropped the bag on Christopher’s bed. I wanted nothing to do with it, but I wasn’t going to make decisions for the clairvoyant.

  I curled up on a deck chair on the back patio with a pitcher of iced tea, a plate of ginger snaps, and the grimoire I was still trying to translate. I’d put three crystal glasses on the tray just in case Christopher and Aiden decided to join me. It was slightly chilly in the shade, but the deck was still warm in the late afternoon sun. And yes, I was hoping that the book might trigger a conversation with Aiden if he came by.

  Paisley, in stalker mode, prowled around the corner of the house, keeping to the shadows at the edges. She paused by the stairs, gazing out at the garden, ears flicking.

  “Gone, are they?” I asked her.

  “Yes.” Aiden strode around the corner after the demon dog, wiping sweat from his face and neck with a towel. I’d felt the hum of his magic a moment before, still full and robust, amplified by Silver Pine’s stolen power.

  I tried to not watch his hands, or the way his T-shirt tightened across his biceps. He looked healthier, having gained back some muscle mass along with his magic.

  He paused at the base of the stairs, stepping forward just enough to shade his eyes under the patio roof. “Christopher’s magic will settle with just you and Paisley in the house.”

  So he had noticed.

  Of course he’d noticed. It was unlikely that there was much he missed. And that ability, that shrewd sense of calculation, weighed heavily on everything that Aiden said and did. The black witch and Daniel were right. How was I to ever know? As stunted as I was when it came to relationships, even my empathy could possibly be fooled.

  The sorcerer desired me sexually, yes. That was obvious even to me. But it might have been the power in my veins that he desired most of all. And how was I to know, to feel, the difference?

  “May I join you?”

  “Yes.”

  He jogged up the stairs, leaning back against the railing instead of taking the chair beside me. Maintaining distance between us, as we’d both been doing for the last four days.

  Paisley shouldered past him, deliberately giving him a shove as she crossed toward me. Well, specifically toward the plate of ginger snaps.

  Aiden dipped his chin to his chest, smiling to himself.

  My heart squelched. I topped up my iced tea, then poured a second glass for Aiden to cover my reaction to his easy smile.

  “Yes,” I said to Paisley, who was staring at me so intensely with her red-hued eyes that she appeared to be trying to communicate telepathically. “One.”

  A tentacle curled out from her otherwise doglike neck and gently plucked up a ginger snap. She then trundled over to the far corner of the patio, sprawled out in the sun, and licked the cookie reverently. Her tongue was blue. And forked.

  Aiden opened his mouth to ask something.

  I tensed, steeling myself for the barrage of questions he must have had after everything Silver had revealed about me, everything she’d taunted me with in the forest.

  But he closed his mouth. Then he leaned forward, reaching toward me. I curled my fingers in, stopping myself from respon
ding in kind.

  He snagged the half-full pitcher of rosy iced tea, brought it to his mouth, tilted back his head, and slowly drained it.

  I watched him unabashedly. Heart fluttering and everything else, utterly and idiotically infatuated with the sorcerer. Even with all the stolen magic running through my veins, embedded into my skin and soul, I hadn’t gained any immunity to him at all. The feeling might actually have become more acute since I’d almost dragged him to his bed in the loft, since I’d kissed him without reservation in the forest.

  Paisley snarled at her cookie, slamming her paw over it, then tossing it into the air.

  “Don’t play with your food,” I said mildly, by rote.

  Aiden finished drinking, then leveled a hooded gaze at me. “I can never tell what you’re thinking.”

  That I want you with every fiber of my being? That I’m an idiot for not reaching out and just touching you, touching you everywhere all at once? “That you owe me a pitcher of iced tea.”

  He laughed quietly. “That I can fix.” He stole a ginger snap, eating it as he wandered back into the kitchen with the pitcher.

  I followed, bringing the tray with me and setting it on the island. I leaned against the counter, watching as Aiden washed and rinsed the glass pitcher.

  “Cold brew? Or hot?” he asked, opening the tea drawer and pulling out the fruit tea blend I preferred iced.

  “Cold, please.”

  He carefully measured the correct amount of loose tea into the pitcher, then turned to the sink and filled it with cold water. He moved as if he belonged in the kitchen, in the house. “It’s amazing that you can just drink the water straight from the tap here.”

  I nodded, weaving the fabric of my dress between my fingers. It was too much, all this tension between us, all this overwhelming emotion. It made me feel desperate.

  I’d been desperate only once before, and I hadn’t liked it then either. Of course, then I had just wanted to feel the sun on my face before I died.

  I hadn’t died, though. I’d walked away. And when my magic came back, marking me as different, as valuable, I had struggled to fit into the world. But I didn’t fit, so I’d made my own place.