“We overload them both at the same time,” he answered.
“What?” I scoffed, a strangled laugh of disbelief catching in my throat. “That’s—”
“Just do exactly what you did last night,” he said. “But this time split the bolt to hit two targets.”
“Have you done this before?” I asked nervously.
“Obviously you don’t watch Arena,” he chuckled. His lips brushed against my neck and threatened to shatter all my focus. My skin prickled and my stomach flipped. “I’ve done this many times.”
“With these?” I nodded my head toward the Sentries in front of us, two stories high and three times bigger than any Sentry I had ever seen.
He shook his head against my shoulder. “No.”
I sighed in defeat.
“But, we have to do it anyway,” he said. “Or we both die. So let’s get out of here.”
I took a deep breath and nodded. I tried to find the energy of both the cores while keeping my shield up. My brain pounded and temples throbbed. Exhaustion consumed every inch of my body, pulling it down toward the ground, and begging me to close my eyes and give up.
Once I found them, I locked on to the cores, and unfolded my arms from my chest. Crew kept his hands clasped around my wrists. As I unfurled my hands from fists to open palms, he slid his fingers in between mine, intertwining our hands together. An intense heat charged from my chest to my throat. The surge that his touch had created inside me fueled the electricity forming at my palms, creating a crackling lightning bolt within seconds.
I tried my hardest to focus on splitting the bolt while most of my mind wanted to focus on every spot where our bodies met. My breath came in stilted gasps amidst waves of heat that raced through my chest.
Another type of energy invaded my senses. It wasn’t from my thoughts or my feelings; it was magic, but not mine . . . and not any magic energy I had ever felt before.
As the lightning bolt shot forward, toward only one core, I watched in awe as it started to turn from yellowish white to bright blue. It split, with no help from me, and not just into two bolts, but into a giant chain—like the roots of a tree—forks and veins sprouting out in every direction. The light nearly blinded me but I couldn’t look away as the lightning storm coming from my palms grew and grew —larger and stronger—until it encompassed both the Sentries.
They overloaded almost instantaneously and collapsed in unison, slumping forward as they powered down, electricity snapping and sizzling on their metal joints.
The strange magic energy that had filled me drained out of me so quickly it made me feel dizzy and sick. My shield dropped and my legs buckled, too tired to hold me up anymore. Crew let go of my hands and steadied me by holding my waist. I couldn’t fight the dizziness as it turned to nausea and vertigo. My vision blurred and the ground seemed to turn under my feet.
“I’m so sorry, Mare,” I heard Crew’s voice, but it seemed far away, even though I felt his arms slide under my legs and behind my shoulders. He scooped me up and I felt as if I was floating in the air.
“Why are you sorry?” I muttered; my mouth dry and my words fuzzy in my own ears. “We did it.”
“Yes,” he said. I couldn’t make out his face. Everything swirled and it made me want to throw up, so I closed my eyes. But, I heard the smile in his voice. “Yes, we did.”
CHAPTER TEN
Wild dreams plagued me, filling chunks of the darkness. I would wake from it occasionally, to see faces I recognized hovering over me, with not enough strength to fully awaken or speak
The dreams were of another land; one I knew was not of this earth or dimension. Its radiant, surreal landscape of colorful plants, shimmering waters and iridescent skies felt both comfortingly familiar and incredibly foreign to me. Part of me had been here before, and part of me had not . . .
Everything seemed filled with magic—even the darkness that I lay in for more time then I could measure, other than in increments of how many times Crew apologized to my sleeping body. I heard them all and counted them and they echoed in my ears.
Sometimes there was more. Sometimes he begged—begged me to wake up, to be okay, and to get through this. Sometimes he told me he was trying, as hard as he could, to bring me out of this but he needed me to fight, too.
Please, Mare. Please fight. I . . . I can't lose you.
One of the times I opened my eyes, he was the only one there. No Forrest, no Iris, no Layni or Tristan, no nurses or shamans; just Crew, clutching my right hand in both of his and staring down at it with red-rimmed eyes. I wiggled my fingers as they had cramped in the confines of his strong grasp, and he jerked his head up to look at my face.
"Mare—oh my God, Mare," he stuttered, "please say something. Can you hear me?" I nodded and every muscle in my neck hurt. "Oh my—nurse!" He called excitedly.
"No!" I rasped, my voice weak from lack of use. "I don't want nurses. I want to talk to you."
His eyes filled with moisture and his lips pulled into a trembling smile. "It's so great to hear your voice. Okay. What do you want to talk about?"
I narrowed my eyes at him a bit. "I think you know, Crew," I said, my throat dry and cracking. "What happened to me and why do you keep apologizing like it's your fault?"
“You heard that . . .” he sighed and rubbed the back of my hand with his thumb and his smile vanished, replaced with a tight frown. "It is my fault. I did this to you."
"Crew, we were both out there. We both did our best and we're both alive. I put myself in that position. It's not your fault if something happened to me. It's not your job to protect—"
"No, Mare." He shook his head and dropped his gaze down to our hands. ”I did this to you.”
I swallowed hard. "What did you do?"
"I combined our magic," he said, admitting it like one would admit stealing a parent’s wallet or losing a favorite pet.
"I do that all the time," I rebutted. "That shouldn't make a difference. It definitely wouldn't knock me out for—how long was I out?"
"Four days," he answered
"Wow. Okay," I remarked. "That definitely doesn't make any sense. I got hit by the Sentries and don't notice it or something, that's the most likely scenario. Combining magic can give you a headache, at the worst, and even that's a pretty rare side effect—"
"No, you're not listening to me," he growled. "I did this to you. I am not supposed to combine magic with you—or anyone. Ever! I've managed to do that, for my whole life— just keep my head down and stay out of any situation where I might feel as if I need to combine with someone else—until I met you."
I shifted uncomfortably in the infirmary cot. "Crew, what are you talking about?" I murmured.
"You're one of the smartest people I've ever met, Marigold," he said. "Why would it be a problem for me to combine magic with someone?"
It wasn't a subject I had studied too intensively, mostly because it was relatively easy for two witches or warlocks to combine magical energies to create more powerful spells. We usually spent two or three weeks studying it in junior year of the high school program and again in freshman year for a semester of energy lab in our college curriculum.
Students loved it and, besides a few headaches, there were never any problems.
As I searched my brain for everything I knew about it, I suddenly remembered something, tucked away in a page at the back of my high school magical energies text. It was a question in a pop quiz, given by Tristan Marsh, and I was the only one who had read the book from cover to cover, so knew the answer.
"Different types of magic," I mumbled as it came back to me. "Dark magic is the weakest of all magic. When a stronger magic is combined with it, the witch’s or warlock's body fights it off like a disease."
I stared at him in shock. If that's what happened, that would mean he wasn't a warlock. He wasn't even human . . .
The other magic was ancient and tied to nonhuman entities, therefore stronger. There was infernal magic, used by demons, and fae ma
gic, uses by faeries.
It was said that dark magic was created when the original witch and warlock each summoned a faerie and a demon, respectively, and offered them eternal servitude in exchange for a small piece of their powers. The faerie and the demon obliged, impressed that the two humans were able to summon them. Afterwards, when the witch and warlock refused the faerie a favor, the other faeries lost all their trust in them and vowed never to give their magic to any human ever again.
When the demon came to the witch and warlock, he asked to be hidden from his enemies. The witch and warlock agreed to let him live in their home if he shapeshifted into a house pet. This demon became the first familiar, and demons and human magic users had remained friendly for hundreds of years.
I had seen demons, many of them. Iris minored in demonology and had summoned about a dozen lesser ones in her senior year of college, alone, as part of a research project on familiars. None of them looked like Crew. In fact most of them looked exactly how you'd expect, until they all of a sudden looked like a cat or a crow, or a toad or rat.
Only greater demons could shapeshift into human form, but they couldn't be summoned and, from what I'd read and been told by Iris, they didn't spend much time in the human realm. Since they could freely aid witches and warlocks with their infernal magic by becoming their familiars, it didn't make much sense for them to need to combine magic with them.
Which meant . . . Crew was a faerie and had done the one thing faeries had vowed to never do.
"Well," I sighed, my brain still spinning from the revelation, "this makes perfect sense."
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean, you being a faerie certainly explains why you're so much better at everyone in Arena," I remarked in a quiet volume, a wry chuckle escaping with my words.
He grimaced. "Look, this was never my intent. I didn't plan on using my powers to gain celebrity or anything—the opposite actually," he defended. "But there were teachers, then trainers, then sponsors and teams and I just—"
"I'm not accusing you of anything," I giggled, sliding myself up a bit to sit up. I looked him in the eyes and dropped my voice to a soft murmur. "I know this isn't the life you want. I knew that from our first conversation.”
“Take away the Arena, the TV, magazines and all the fans and you're still doing a very important and noble thing,” I continued. “You're protecting magic users from the Sentries. You're not just some celebrity, Crew. You're a hero. Specifically, you are my hero."
“You’re—you’re not mad at me?” he asked with genuine surprise.
“Of course not,” I replied. “You saved my life. Why would I be mad at you?”
“I don’t know I just—I always figured if I told anyone, they’d be upset that I kept this secret my whole life,” he explained with a shrug, “and that I’ve benefited from it. I feel like a fraud, Mare. That doesn’t even take into account the fact that faeries and humans have been enemies for centuries or that I really hurt you in the process of trying to get us out of there.”
A single tear rolled down his cheek. I noticed how pale and exhausted he looked and wondered if he had slept at all, over the past few days, or just kept vigil at my bedside. Instinctively, I reached out and wiped the tear away with my thumb, cradling his jaw in my palm.
“That doesn’t matter to me,” I said, shaking my head. “Any of it. You’re a good person. You are not my enemy, no matter what faeries and humans think about each other, and I know you would never hurt me on purpose. You did what you had to do and I’m grateful for it.”
His tired yet still-sparkling eyes roamed over every section of my face until they seemed to settle on my mouth. Sliding a hand behind my neck, he gently pulled me closer as he leaned in toward me until we were just inches apart.
My breath caught and a fire erupted in my chest. I could hear a hitch in his intake of breath, as well, and a tremble in his exhalation.
“You probably are going to be mad at me when you see your classroom,” he purred playfully, his bottom lip brushing against mine.
“What did you do?” I whispered.
“Plenty of time for that conversation later,” he murmured, and then he took my lips in his with force.
A moan of desire sounded in my throat as I closed my eyes and I drank in his taste. I let my neck muscles release and fall back into the strong cradle of his hand. His other hand, which had been clasped around mine, ran up the side of my body until it rested on the side of my face.
My skin prickled, my chest ached, and my core burned. I wanted him so much I couldn’t control myself. My free hand clutched at his shirt and pulled his body closer to mine. A growl rumbled in his chest, but then, he abruptly broke away.
“Someone’s coming,” he whispered. We both gasped to reclaim our breath as we looked into each other’s eyes.
He scooted his chair back and I released my grip on his shirt, as his hands slid down from my face and neck. He grabbed my hand that still cradled his jaw and pecked my palm before placing it back in my own lap.
I heard the click-clack of shoes in the hallway outside the infirmary, and within a few seconds, Tabitha the nurse entered.
“She has awoken!” she said as soon as she saw me. “All your worryin’ paid off, huh, Mister Wrathshore?”
“I guess it did,” he said with a grin directed at me.
“Well, let’s get you a rejuvenation potion and get ya back on your feet, okay Darlin’?” she suggested. “Your family needs you more than ever, now.”
I snapped my head to her. “What do you mean?”
Her face pulled and eyebrows furrowed. “He didn’t tell you?”
“No,” I said, looking back at Crew. “Tell me what?”
Tabitha rummaged around the cabinet behind my cot, then handed me a vial full of glowing, pearly purple liquid and placed a comforting hand on my shoulder.
“I’ll let him fill you in,” she sighed. “It’s been a long four days without you, Miss Marigold.”
She turned and shuffled away from us and my eyes narrowed at Crew. I tilted my head at him.
“Drink it,” he ordered.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I countered.
“Drink it first,” he said, more firmly.
I groaned and put the vial to my lips, shooting the potion—which had the unappetizing flavor combination of green grapes, rancid onion, burnt juniper and women’s perfume—in one swift gulp.
“Now tell me,” I demanded.
“I will tell you everything,” Crew said. “But, first, I’m getting you out of this place.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The rejuvenation potion kicked in immediately, ridding my muscles of their aches and exhaustion and boosting my energy to ‘full night’s sleep’ level. Crew told Tabitha he would walk me back to my room, which he did. When we reached my room, he told me to get dressed for dinner.
“You haven’t told me anything about what happened yet,” I argued.
“And I will,” he said with a grin. “Over dinner.”
“I don’t want to go down there with everyone,” I grumbled as I stepped into my small walk-in closet and pulled the door shut; enough so he couldn’t see me undress.
“Oh, God, no,” he laughed, “I’m not taking you to the dining hall. You won’t get a minute to yourself, even to take a bite. I’ve been fielding questions about you left and right, from this way and that. We’re going somewhere alone; off campus. Somewhere . . . private.”
My heart twirled behind my ribs. After what had just happened in the infirmary, I knew this was a date. I had questioned the brunch, but his telling me he was taking me somewhere private for dinner, after kissing me like he kissed me . . . definite date.
“I see,” I drawled as I flipped through my skirts, finally deciding on a ruffled, navy-blue wrap skirt with a coral flower print. “Are you sure it’s safe?” I asked.
“For us or for the school?” he chuckled.
“Either,” I replied. I pulled a whit
e V-necked tee shirt off its hanger and put it on, then wrapped the skirt around my waist and tied it.
“Well, the school is about a hundred times safer right now than any other magic school in the country,” he said. “Every protection spell you could think of has been placed on the campus and the entire Empire State division of Sentry Force is here, right now.”
“Okay, then, how about us?”
I stepped out of the closet as I slipped into a pair of strappy tan sandals.
“Wow,” he uttered. “Uh, well, in addition to looking super-hot in that skirt, you are now at least ten times more powerful than you were four days ago, which is a hell of a lot. So, I’m not worried about either of us being able to defend for ourselves.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “I thought that my body was fighting off the fae magic? Hence the whole catatonic, deep sleep thing.” I grabbed a pair of fringed earrings from my vanity and put them on as I walked toward him.
“You did fight it off,” he said. “Or, you tried. But ultimately, you assimilated a portion of it into your own magical energy.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, cocking my head at him.
He reached out a hand and placed it on my chest. “I can feel it,” he said softly.
An electric current rushed through me, snapping and crackling in my chest just below where his fingers touched my bare skin, which warmed noticeably as my pulse quickened. We gazed at each other through a moment of potent silence.
“Plus,” he added, pulling his hand back abruptly, “we’re just going to a regular restaurant in Manhattan—they won’t attack a non-magical location. They don’t want regular humans to know magic exists, because they don’t actually want it to exist at all.”
I sighed, releasing a breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding, until he took his hand from my skin.
“If anything happens here, obviously we’ll come right back,” he said with reassurance.
“Of course,” I said. I grabbed my denim jacket off the back of the door.
“Are you feeling okay to teleport?” he asked, reaching out for my hand.
Bonded by Fae's Magic Page 5
