This time, the woman pushed her son aside. Anger heightened her power. Akane smelled it in the air, not only the sulfurous smell of sorcery, but raw power, raw magic.
And blood. Blood poured down the male sorcerer’s face, his wound suddenly much larger than the scratch Akane had made.
The female sorcerer was using her own son’s blood to charge her powers.
Maybe telling the ugly truth about Hiro hadn’t been a wise idea. Some modern Japanese mortals still took honoring the ancestors seriously. No surprise that sorcerers, with their hidebound, traditionalist natures, would be in that number, or that the truth would infuriate such people.
The temperature in the room dropped by twenty degrees. The woman’s hands glowed fuchsia, streaked with black. She was seriously angry, and her anger pushed her into darker territory, into forms of magic that might be able to crack Paul’s defenses.
Akane smelled her fear and shame. The woman hated that she was hurting her son, even a little, to boost her power, but as far as Akane could tell, she believed she was doing her duty, carrying out a charge laid on her by an ancestor, a charge handed down for many human generations.
With Akane’s help, the Donovans could beat these sorcerers—they might have been able to do so on their own, but it would have been less certain. That didn’t mean things might not get messy and painful first. She didn’t want anyone to get hurt, not even the sorcerers. They weren’t evil people, merely, as many sorcerers were, so set on “doing the right thing” that they couldn’t see the so-called right thing was leading them into wrongdoing.
If the woman continued playing with blood magics, though, both she and her son would be tainted and they’d slide into true evil, becoming a danger to others far less able to defend themselves.
Akane had come here to help Tag and Paul, but it seemed she had souls to save as well.
She sighed. A kitsune’s work was never done.
Akane’s kind were, among their other attributes, guardians of wild places and wild, innocent things. She was willing to extend that charge at the moment, to guard the not-wild-enough and hardly innocent from their own stupidity, and everything else from what they might become.
She gathered her energies and said a prayer.
Paul’s magic embraced her from behind, a warm rainbow of protective power.
She didn’t need protection. She was in the right this time. The sorcerers could, at worst, annoy her, even with far darker magics than she sensed these sorcerers were willing to use at this time.
On the other hand, if Paul’s spells wavered, the sorcerers could do serious harm to the men, and to the other witches waiting outside, especially Paul’s sister with her porous mind. Time for a change of tactics.
With a mere thought, she shed her elaborate robes and stood naked between her lovers and their enemies. With another thought, she cast a glamour upon herself, honing her beauty so it became a weapon. The male sorcerer stared, his dark eyes wide, aghast yet unable to look away. Keyed to such scents, Akane smelled his reluctant desire over the stench of sorcery.
Deliciously, she also smelled Paul and Tag rousing. Both of them were almost immune to her glamour, between Paul’s own illusion-powers and Tag’s Trickster-touched blood. They responded simply to her, and to the love and desire she felt for them. With Paul’s arousal, the red vein in his power flared, grew stronger. It fed on her beauty, and on Tag’s, and on Tag’s lust and love.
“Remember,” she said to Paul and Tag, hoping they knew exactly what she meant them to recall: not just the erotic heat of their time together, but the way their senses merged so they felt what the others experienced, the way their boundaries blurred.
They did.
Tag sprang to erection, his animalside able to overcome the dangers of their situation. In a phantom part of her body, Akane felt the pulsing urgency of a hard, needy cock, echoing and complementing neediness of her own.
Paul tapped in to that power, let his own grow from the strength of Tag’s love.
She entwined her magic with theirs, silver and bright autumn russet among Paul’s primary-hued magic and the earthy shades of Tag’s spirit.
“Please share your strength with me,” she asked softly. She could have used Paul’s magic and Tag’s pure energy without asking—their powers were that interwoven with hers now—but asking and sharing would make this particular piece of magic work better.
She hoped. She was making it up as she went along and prayed Inari blessed her efforts.
They didn’t answer out loud, but Paul and Tag’s distinctive energies surged into her. The fur in her tails stood up from its electric force. Her nipples crinkled. The male sorcerer’s eyes grew wider and wilder, even as more blood poured down his face. Her sex moistened. Heat rose in her belly and rose to meet the heat pouring out of her heart.
She loved them. Whether or not they felt the same didn’t matter. She loved them, and she was ending this sorcerer problem here and now for them, in a way that Trickster and Inari would approve.
Sorcerers liked mind-fucks? Let them experience being on the receiving end of one.
She poured out all her own power, all she had received from Paul and Tag, all she could borrow from the wild surroundings and from the Power whose avatar she was, and she shoved into the sorcerers’ minds, using the truth like a sword.
Sometimes honesty was the best trick of all, especially when you were up against a web of age-old lies that had taken on a life of their own.
In the physical realm, she swung the katanas, cutting away illusion.
In the sorcerers’ minds, she let the story of Hiro and Masao and herself unfold in all its embarrassing detail, from the men’s erotically charged yet emotionally stunted relationship to her seduction to Hiro’s tantrum, her guilt, and the curse that trapped her for centuries.
She didn’t merely show them, though. She let them feel it in searing detail: Masao’s frustration with Hiro’s distance; Hiro’s fury and sense of betrayal; Masao’s despair when he realized he’d lost Hiro and had never truly had Akane; and most of all, her own shame, the shame she’d carried for two hundred years and more.
The female sorcerer fell to her knees and rocked back and forth, keening softly as her beliefs shattered and she realized how close she’d come to doing irreparable harm to her son and to her own soul.
Her son knelt beside her, hand on her shoulder, speaking softly to her in Japanese. Akane could have listened in easily enough with her keen hearing, but she chose not to. The look on his face was enough. Something in him had changed. He’d let go of the self-righteous anger that had propelled him to this ruined house and to near-murder.
With a careless wave of her hand, she closed the cut on his face, leaving a fine scar to remind him to be wiser in future. With another wave, she healed Paul’s and Tag’s bruises.
“Trouble them no more,” she commanded. “Or you will face my wrath and that of divine Inari.”
“And that of Donovans both living and dead,” Paul said.
“And that of one pissed-off Southern fox with a gun. I’ve stopped carrying since I moved to Donovan’s Cove, but I plan to start again.” Tag’s voice flowed sweet and deadly as tupelo honey over the edge of a katana blade.
The female sorcerer, still again, no longer crying, nodded. “Hai. We are overmatched and our quest misguided. Forgive us.”
She bowed, touching her forehead to the floor. After a second’s hesitation, her son followed her lead.
While they were still bowed, Akane breezed out the door and the Donovans followed, joining Guillermo and a pale, shaky Portia outside.
Akane tossed her swords into the underbrush as if they were nothing, restored the door to its hinges—and dropped a previously nonexistent deadbolt into place.
“It won’t last long,” she whispered. “It’s mostly illusion and the memories in the wood. But it should secure them long enough for the cars with sirens I hear in the distance to arrive.” She doubted anyone else could hear t
he sirens, except maybe Tag, but they all took her word, even the swarthy witch she’d never met before. “Forgiveness is human. I prefer justice.”
As an afterthought, she manifested basic western clothing, including a hooded slicker. Later she’d come up with something prettier, but for now, warm and dry would do.
“Who called the cops?” Tag asked.
One by one, the witches shook their heads.
“Then it’s the Agency and I don’t think any of us are in the mood for that level of bullshit. Guillermo, how good are the concealments on that car of yours anyway?”
Guillermo smiled lethally. “She is metal. I am an Angelini. Still, a head start is always good. Get in and hold on tight.”
Chapter Eighteen
They’d returned to Donovan’s Cove emotionally spent and ready to collapse, only to have the Agency pay them a visit in the form of the Portland bureau chief and one aide. It had been painless as such things went, even if Akane had vanished into the night when she heard their big SUV pulling up. The sorcerers had confessed their plot against Paul and Tag, so the Agency representatives conceded Paul and the others had acted in self-defense and with great restraint.
Curiously, or perhaps not, the sorcerers hadn’t mentioned Akane was in the area, or that Tag wasn’t human.
By the time it was all over, everyone had gone from merely bone-weary to ready to collapse. Akane had returned when the Agents left, but immortal though she was, she’d admitted to fatigue and went into the damp, winter forest for the night to refresh her spirit. Paul and Tag had watched her go, figuring that was the last they’d see of her, but she was back on time for breakfast.
Granted, it had been a late breakfast.
Now Akane curled on the sofa in Paul and Tag’s quarters, careless of the russet and amber velvet Victorian gown she’d conjured out of air and memories that clung to the main house at Donovan’s Cove, the remains of a plate of smoked salmon by her head. She stretched luxuriously, more cat than fox in that motion. Paul couldn’t look away. “Yesterday was fun.” She chuckled.
“I wouldn’t call it fun. Satisfying in retrospect, but not fun.”
“Not hardly fun,” Tag agreed. “I don’t ever want to feel that helpless again. Although the Agency bureau chief in Portland offering formal apology for not doing better at monitoring illegal magic in the area—without her realizing she was talking to an unregistered dual—was comedy gold.”
Akane smiled, showing pointed vulpine teeth. “I can’t imagine why the sorcerers didn’t tell the whole story.” Sarcasm rang in her pretty voice.
“We scared them more than the Agency does,” Paul said. “Those swords of yours…”
Akane laughed, a silver sound that made his blood bubble like champagne. “Did you notice I never actually used them except to gesture? Two twigs and much illusion. I’d be afraid to brandish a real sword. I’m sure I’d hurt the wrong person. They looked impressively fierce, though, especially with the giant form.”
She looked so smug, so pleased with herself—so much like Tag when he’d gotten away with something—that Paul laughed too.
As he did, the blessing of her presence struck him with renewed force. She was there, in his house, on his sofa, looking like a petite, almost fragile human beauty, but her tiny body contained so much power that he was still amazed she’d been able to conceal herself from the Agency officer so effectively by simply going invisible. The officer had been a normy, but, even so, Paul would think the hair on her arms would have prickled or something, some indication that she was in the presence of a being of great, chaotic power.
This being—this beautiful, sensual being—had come to his rescue, his and Tag’s. Maybe they hadn’t needed rescuing, but it would have been a scarily close fight without her. No guarantee they’d have won, and even if they had, Portia could have been damaged badly.
Akane hadn’t allowed any talk of thanks before. But Paul couldn’t let the words go unsaid any longer. “Akane, thank you. I don’t know how you knew we were in trouble, but thank you.”
“I feel you and Tag, Paul. How would I not know when you needed me when you are both already with me all the time, right here?” She touched her heart, or where her heart would lie were she truly human. As an immortal, she might not have an organ that pumped blood, but her essence centered in that spot, as it did in all sentients.
“You feel us all the time? Not only when we were in danger or when we share magic?” The cord tugged both ways. That meant something Paul feared and longed to contemplate. The magic they’d shared had joined the three of them, not quite like a marriage-bond, but as close to it as could be expected when one party was immortal.
Akane bowed her head, hiding her face. Her fox ears twitched expressively and…
“Are you blushing? I can’t believe I’m seeing a fox lady blush,” Tag exclaimed, his keener vision catching it before Paul could be sure.
“Forget my words. I should not have burdened you with them.”
“What burden?” Tag asked as he slipped from his chair to crouch next to Akane. Paul joined him, one hand on Tag’s broad shoulder, the other on Akane’s more delicate one.
Balance.
It wasn’t perfect symmetry. How could it be when two mortals were joined with an immortal being, an avatar of one of the Powers? Yet what surged through Paul had nothing to do with immortality or avatars, but something simpler and yet far more complex. Toward the man on one side, perfect love; toward the woman on the other, a whir of emotions that he’d hesitate to call love yet, but which had all the ingredients that might become love.
From both of them, he sensed only love and trust.
Love and trust and from Akane, a hint of fear. He hadn’t sensed a speck of fear from her when she’d faced down the sorcerers, only protective rage and a fox’s glee at outwitting her enemies, but now, with two people she cared for, Akane was afraid.
She trembled as if controlling tears.
Then her body dissipated to mist.
“Akane,” Paul cried out, not caring if half the family heard, “don’t leave us again. We need you. We…I’m falling in love with you.”
Tag clasped his hand. “So am I, Akane. So if you don’t want to hurt us, get your three-tailed butt back here and don’t leave us again.”
They spoke to the air.
Chapter Nineteen
What was she going to do?
Akane, incorporeal, hovered outside the main house at Donovan’s Cove. Even without a body, she felt sick: sick with longing, sick with dread, sick with panic.
They felt for her, as she did for them. But how could it ever work? Paul would have to defy all the weight of his family tradition and risk his magic, and then there was the little matter of their mortality. Perhaps love wouldn’t be enough and it would be best to go.
She heard a woman weeping.
Compassion and fox curiosity combined to lure Akane toward the sound. Auntie Roz sat in one of the turret sitting rooms, crying as if her heart was broken. She sat in front of a computer that sported a picture of a newborn baby. The young fire-worker Siobhan was by her side.
“Stop it, Auntie,” Siobhan said. “Everything’s okay again. Tag and Paul are fine. Portia’s engaged to her Italian hunk and he says he’ll teach me to drive—yay!” She did an excited little dance. “The Agency went away and left us alone. And Elissa has a beautiful new daughter just in time for Yule. Everything’s great. So please stop crying, or I’ll have to set my hair on fire to distract you.”
Elissa? Wasn’t that the cousin with two husbands? Fascinated, Akane drew closer, hoping neither the young witch nor the old would notice the intrusion.
Luckily for her nosiness, while both witches were powerful enough to sense an invisible eavesdropper, they were both too distracted to do so.
“Okay, okay, you know I hate it when you kids set your hair on fire.” The old woman wiped her eyes and tried to smile, but Akane could tell she was faking it for the girl’s sake. “Some of
this is good tears. My biggest worry when Elissa married Jude was that someday they’d regret not being able to have children. Lions are almost as family-oriented as we witches are, you know. And now…that beautiful, beautiful baby…” Auntie Roz sniffled again.
“Look at that little cutie.” Siobhan grinned at the picture of the baby, who, in the manner of all newborn humans, looked like a wise, wizened monkey—a copper-brown monkey, not fair like the other Donovans Akane had met. “Lucky Jocelyn. No one’s ever going to get her mixed up with all the other Donovan kids her age, not like they did Maura and Heather and me.”
“Probably not.” The old woman had stopped crying, but she didn’t sound happy.
Suddenly Siobhan seemed to have a flash of intuition. “Wait a minute, Auntie. You were the one who was yelled loudest about …you know, what Elissa did. About her other husband. That’s why you were crying.”
“Since when have you been a telepath, child? I thought I’d be safer with you than with Portia or Paul.”
“Auras are like living fire, so I read them pretty easily. Yours is all choppy now, as if you’re happy and sad and angry and frightened at the same time.”
Roz sighed. “We’ve taught you far too well.”
“Elissa couldn’t have had the baby if her guys—both of them—weren’t Mr. Right.” The young girl shrugged expressively. “Mr. Rights. Whatever. I’ve barely started learning red magic, but even I know that. A red witch can’t have a baby with the wrong partner. Your body just won’t let it happen. And a baby with two daddies who aren’t even human? That means it must be like legendary love, romance-novel stuff. Right?”
“That’s what’s so confusing. This child I wanted to deny until she was actually born proves Elissa’s triad is right for her. I’m happy they have a baby, and thrilled that Elissa’s finally come into her full power, even if she had to go through hell to get there, but face it, a baby with two fathers is strange even by witch standards. Jocelyn has shades of all three of them in her aura, from what Dermott and Jan said. I don’t know what that means, Siobhan, other than we’ve been wrong about some fundamentals of magic and life all these years. That’s a lot to take in at my age. And a miracle baby born so close to Yule…this little one may have a destiny and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, let alone a child of our blood.”
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