They had identified the three rogues Sutton had killed at his cabin, but so far, it didn’t look like their brainwashing rogue was one of them. Who was Styx? What was his next move? Was he working for Quinn Young or on his own? Sutton turned and looked at Linc. He topped six feet, and wore perfectly draped custom-made suits; his shoes alone probably cost more than Sutton’s cabin. No doubt he paid for those shoes with his winnings from high-stakes gambling. “Thought you had connections.”
He lifted one corner of his mouth. “I’m not the Ghost Whisperer. Give me a real name and concrete details. Your Styx is a phantom.”
“He’s real and he’s alive. I’m going to find him.” Furious, he added, “I might have gotten something out of the last rogue I killed if Carla Fisk hadn’t shown up.” Once he realized that that rogue wanted Carla, he’d acted, killing the man. The witch was making him lose control.
Linc turned to the bar, ordered a vodka neat, then downed it in one swallow. He set his empty glass down and eyed Sutton. “There a reason you look like something I ran over three days ago?”
Sutton snagged a beer and refused to let himself think about Carla. Draining the bottle, he shifted his gaze to the witch hunter. “It’d take more than your pretty-boy car to run over me.” Actually, Linc had a powerful Viper, but the concept still held—his body would smash the front end of that beauty. All he’d get for the trouble was maybe a bruise that would heal in a day.
Linc winced. “Point taken. But you still look like hell.”
Sutton plunked down his beer bottle. “Makes me all warm that you worry.”
Linc narrowed his gold eyes. “You’re supposed to be the computer genius but I don’t see you doing anything genius-like. Brigg is missing and you haven’t found a damn thing.”
“Nothing on Brigg’s accounts, I told you that. The man hasn’t charged anything, used his debit card, or done any kind of electronic transaction. I have it flagged to beep me if anything pops. Until then, crawl back out of my ass and leave me the hell alone.”
“You think he’s dead.”
Sutton gave it to him straight. “Or gone rogue. They could have turned him—you’d better get used to the idea.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Linc snapped, then turned away and stalked over toward the fire-etched acrylic dance floor, snagged a classy-looking blonde, and pulled her onto the dance floor.
“He have anything?” Axel spoke as he and Ram settled next to Sutton.
“Besides an attitude? No.” Suddenly, the club started to spin. Flashing lights burst in his head, and his entire body was covered in prickly sensations like a thousand needles had been shoved into his skin. He went weightless. The thick scent of the club’s sweat and alcohol was replaced by lavender and blood.
What the fuck? Had he been shot again?
This wasn’t right. The astral plane didn’t appear as the formless, endless blue Carla normally saw when she began her journey. Nor was it something from Pam’s mind. No, this was straight from her dream. “Pam?” she called, trying to force the dream back and bring the mortal woman’s doppelgänger forward.
Unsuccessful, she found herself still walking down the colored pathway, surrounded on both sides by leafy vegetation dotted with large white and purple flowers. Just ahead was the grassy area and the waterfall. She could feel her hair blowing out behind her. She looked down.
Naked.
Oh, God. Why was she reenacting her dream? She had to get control of her thoughts. Concentrate on Pam, and talk to Keri when she appeared. She closed her eyes and called up the image of Pam lying in the bed, looking peaceful.
She felt a warm touch on her skin, just above her armband. Good, she’d found Pam. She opened her eyes, turned, and forgot to breathe.
“Where am I?”
“Sutton!” He was here, on the astral plane. With her.
She could feel the heat of his gaze scorch right through the cool, wet mist of the waterfall. First her face flamed hot, then the skin on her neck heated and the feeling poured down her chest as his eyes followed.
His stare lingered on her breasts, making her nipples ache. When she felt the touch of his gaze on her belly, sparks lit up her insides. She suddenly blurted out, “Astral plane!”
His gaze rose. “What?”
“You’re on the astral plane. This isn’t real. You shouldn’t be here. Maybe you’re not really here.” She was babbling, but she couldn’t think fast enough, not with his incredible blue eyes looking at her. Seeing her stripped bare. For him. Oh God, the humiliation alone. She’d wished him here with her. She wanted to look and confirm her suspicions that he was naked, too.
“Carla, what the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know.” She had never done anything like this before. She sure as hell hadn’t ever pulled a witch hunter onto the astral plane. She’d only done it with the people she hypnotized, and that was so they’d be in a place they felt safe. This wasn’t making sense.
“You’re naked.”
She was desperately trying to conjure clothes to cover up. “I can’t seem to make my clothes appear.” Was this Keri? It was harder to tell on the astral plane. She wasn’t used to feeling Keri’s power in her doppelgänger body.
He dropped his stare. “I like you this way.”
She took a breath. “You have to go back. Leave.”
“I don’t know how the hell I got here.” He finally looked up. “Or where my clothes went.”
That was it. She lost her willpower and took a peek. Tiny droplets of mist beaded on his massive shoulders and ran in thin rivulets over the swells and valleys of his arms and chest, catching in the crisp light-brown hair. Since he kept his head bald, she’d never really thought about his hair color.
She couldn’t stop herself now.
His wide chest narrowed into a flat stomach. The thin streams of water ran over the ridges and down in a V pattern.
Yep, his hair was brown.
Her breath caught, her nipples grew taut at the sight of him. His penis was engorged, standing up long and thick. It was deepening in color as she watched. Her mouth dried, and she curled her fingers into her palms to keep from touching him. Would it feel hot? Would the skin stretched over the hard length feel soft? She lowered her eyes, taking in his muscular thighs all the way down to his very large feet on the red, brown, and gray pavers. She really didn’t know what to say. “Nothing like this has ever happened before.”
“I don’t feel the curse. I can smell your blood, but … oh, hell, I was shot again, wasn’t I? Am I dead?”
She snapped up her head, fear blasting through her like a cork had popped. Was he dead? No! She didn’t see dead people! “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Talking to Axel. The club was getting ready to close. Then suddenly”—he shrugged and all his muscles rippled—“I got dizzy and here I am.”
“No pain?”
“The lights started to flash, there was a needles sensation, then I could smell you.”
“I don’t think you’re dead. Plus … I don’t think you’d, uh, have your body if you were dead.”
He looked down. “Yep, all there.” Then he lifted his head with a grin. His white teeth flashed, then he said, “But we should make sure.” He reached out both hands, capturing her shoulders.
“Uh …”
He crowded into her; his chest touched her breasts, his thighs cradled her hips, his erection pressed up against her belly. “Problem, doctor? Either I’m dead or I’m not really here, isn’t that what you said?”
He sure felt real. “Yes, but at your cabin—”
His eyes gleamed. “I was trying not to kill you. Here, I don’t want to kill you. Here I want to finish what we started.”
She could feel what he wanted pressed up against her. His hands were warm on her shoulders. His breath felt like a caress. His voice dropped to pure seduction. “Do you know what it feels like to be free of the fear that I’ll hurt you? How I longed to touch you without
being afraid of losing control and slaughtering you?” He ran his hands down her arms.
Shivers raced through her, her chakra flung open and poured out to swirl and writhe. She shouldn’t be feeling physical sensations like this on the astral plane, but she was. More than ever. “I thought I just incited bloodlust in you. Then today, maybe it was Keri—”
He shook his head. “It’s you.” He kept up the sensual glide of his hands over her arms until he stopped at the band on her left biceps. He traced the silver, his fingers dipping in and out of the loops. “Ever since the first night I caught your scent at your house I wanted you, craved you.”
“You were outside!” He had been there to guard her, Joe, and Morgan, but he’d stayed outside.
“I smelled you. The scent was on your car, around the flowers, your lawn furniture … anywhere you had been. Lavender is the scent of your skin. That scent made me desperate to touch you and make love to you. But the darker scent of your blood, it brought out the curse, and I didn’t dare get too close to you.” He closed his eyes, his face going tight. “The night the rogues took you, nothing could stop me from tracking you and rescuing you … but I was sure that once I found you the blood-curse was going to win. Axel swore he’d kill me before I could kill you.”
“You touched my blood when you tore open the metal clamps. But you never hurt me.” He’d given her his shirt, just like he’d done earlier today. Her powers reached, searching for him, trying to connect with him. “You made me feel safe.”
He inhaled sharply. She felt his dick twitch hard against her belly. He lowered his head. Slowly. His eyes on her.
She could stop this madness. But she was held in his gaze. Still, she tried to make sense of it. “This can’t be real.”
He paused. “A dream? If it’s a dream, what’s the harm? I can smell your desire.”
“But—”
He raised his eyebrows. “Are you going to say you aren’t wet for me?”
She wouldn’t babble like a teenager. She had nothing to be embarrassed about. “That proves this isn’t real.”
He blinked, then slid one hand from her shoulders into her hair to cradle the back of her head. “Your desire is real. It was real at my cabin and it’s real now.”
“No. It’s not mine. Can’t be. I haven’t felt lust, or anything really, since Keri died.” She was trying to make sense of what was happening. But the truth was that she loved the idea that he wanted her.
Something swept across the blue in his eyes, something black and brown, with a feathered edge. “It’s been hard on you, hasn’t it? Losing your sister?”
Oh, no. She wasn’t doing this. She could take anything but his sympathy. She had held it together ever since her complete breakdown the first day of Keri’s murder. She said the first thing that popped into her mind. “Shut up and kiss me.”
He wrapped his arm around her back, pulling her more tightly into his body, and his mouth. He brushed his lips across hers, igniting a pool of warm liquid in her belly. He smelled of forest and earth along with a trace of beer. She wanted more of him, she wanted to taste him.
He made a noise in the back of his throat, his fingers sliding from her hair to stroke the skin along her nape. Shivers broke out, racing along her nerves. The warm sensation turned to white-hot lava. Her powers jumped and shot through her in a wild pattern. She was losing control with just a kiss.
The slide of his tongue against hers filled a vast and barren loneliness inside of her. She dug her fingers into the warmth of his biceps muscles, aching for more of him.
His hand slid over her shoulder blade, down the curve of her waist to the flare of her hip. The heat of his rough hand made her shiver, then all she felt was a soft caress. From the breeze? The waterfall? It felt like feathers. She arched into the sensation.
His fingers spread over the scar at the base of her spine. Sutton lifted his head, his blue eyes boring into hers. “This is the scar from the rogue’s knife?”
He was getting too close, touching her in her most vulnerable place. Keri’s murder had left her feeling like she’d been torn in half, and the scar was a symbol of that tear. She wanted to tell him not to touch the scar, not to invade her like that. But she couldn’t. His touch had shifted from purely sexy to warm and gentle. Like her scar was something to be treated with care. She nodded wordlessly.
“Does it hurt?”
“No. Normally it’s numb.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Not now?”
His fingers kept brushing the healed marks, firing a deep sense of relaxation into her. “I can feel your touch. And today, at your cabin, it was hot.”
He slid his hands to rest on her hips, then turned her around so that her back was to him.
Carla stared at the beautiful flowers, inhaling the rich fragrance, and knew she was acting out of character. Letting Sutton in too deep.
The silence behind her tightened her shoulders. What did he see?
His hands wrapped around her hips. Then she felt … oh, sweet Ancestors, his mouth against her scar. His lips full and firm, then his warm tongue tracing the path that had been burned into her with the knife.
He was on his knees behind her, kissing her scar, kissing her pain.
Emotions and sensations erupted in her. Every touch of his mouth and tongue ignited a fire that swelled her nipples and between her legs. That he somehow seemed to understand her pain and loneliness forced her to feel more than she wanted to. The intimacy of it stripped her emotionally bare.
How could Sutton touch so much of her? Like he knew her right down to her soul?
He kept up laving at her lower back, his hands tightening slightly on her hips. Then he kissed his way up her spine as he rose to his feet. Pulling her back to his chest, he said, “Let me make love to you.”
Overwhelmed by the feel of him surrounding her from behind, she said, “This can’t be real.”
“Feels real.”
No!
The scream shattered through the velvety atmosphere of waterfall mist and foliage. The falls vanished, and the flowers and vines wilted brown.
“Keri? Keri!” It was her sister’s voice. Where was she?
Sutton spun her around and shoved her back up against a trellis holding the dead vines. “My knife, where is it?” He demanded.
“Move! It’s Keri!” She shoved him, but he wouldn’t budge.
The smell of sulfur burned her nose and throat. Dear Ancestors, that smell wasn’t Keri. The air grew heavy and cold sweat froze the sensuality into ice. She shivered behind Sutton. The elemental knowledge closed her chakras up tight. “Demon.”
“Where?” He barked the demand at her.
“I don’t know!” The trellis behind her disappeared. She fell backward, windmilling her arms in sheer panic.
Sutton blurred into movement, spinning around to catch hold of her arms before she hit the ground. He pulled her up, shifted her around, and stood her next to him with his heavy arm anchoring her to his side. “Can you bring my knife to me?”
She shook her head, realizing that she couldn’t control anything! Her chakras were closed.
Where the trellis had been now looked like some kind of horrific explosion had taken place. Fires burned and blackened unidentifiable lumps. A hot wind blew the stench of sulfur and ashes. Pools of what looked like blood bubbled up from the charred ground. There was a hideous echo of screams.
Then the bloody, blackened ground exploded like a volcano. In the spew of black smoke, a form took the shape of three heads on a thick body.
“Asmodeus!” He’d found her on the astral plane!
Sutton shifted and shoved her behind him. She found herself suddenly staring at the eagle gaze of his tattoo. Then the wings seemed to lift, rising off Sutton’s skin.
As if the bird was trying to shield her, too.
No! Sutton had fought for her once, risking his life and his soul. She couldn’t let him do it again, he would lose against Asmodeus. She had to get him off the astral
plane.
How?
Frantically, she thought of her sister’s furious No! “Keri, help me!” She cried out, raising her arms high and forcing as many of her chakras open as she could.
“Stop, witch! You will not escape me!” the demon cried.
The pops along her spine rushed through her. She felt Keri close by and pulled all the power she could from her sister.
Then she mentally shoved Sutton and his eagle from the astral plane.
Sutton turned to look over his shoulder at her, his eyes burning with rage.
Then he was gone, vanished. She was left facing Asmodeus. Her powers rushed back into her chakras, leaving her dizzy.
“Excellent,” one of the demon heads said.
“Yes. Very good,” another head agreed, its bulbous eyes watching something.
The third head turned its evil gaze to her. “How badly do you want your sister’s soul freed? Enough to sacrifice your own?”
Oh, shit. Too late, she realized what she’d done. Turning, she caught the trace of Keri’s magical shimmer as it arched from the astral plane down into the physical plane. Carla didn’t have enough power to follow its trail once it disappeared from the astral plane.
But the demon had more power than she did, and he knew it.
He knew where her sister was! Asmodeus’s thick, horrible, blood-tasting laughter echoed in her head as she slammed back into herself on the physical plane.
“Carla!” Her mom was bending over her.
She opened her eyes and found herself sitting in the rocking chair her mom had been in earlier. Her head throbbed, bile burned her throat, and her stomach roiled sickeningly. The buzzing in her ears made it hard to think.
Then she remembered.
Leaning forward, she grabbed her mom’s arm. “Keri! Asmodeus knows where she is!”
Thrown back onto the physical plane, Sutton was helpless to get back to Carla. The club was empty, except for the four other Wing Slayer Hunters.
“Where’s Darcy?” Sutton demanded. “I have to go back! Carla’s alone on the astral plane with Asmodeus. I need Darcy to send me back.”
Soul Magic Page 7
