In the Company of Witches (38 page)

Medieval superstition said Satan came to dance with the witches, fornicate with them all. A smile touched her lips. More likely, someone witnessed a male witch wearing a horned headdress, channeling the Lord, the Lady’s Consort, and coupling with the head priestess to draw down energy. The Great Rite. Of course, witches celebrated the sensual, so it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that they all joined in on that pleasure after the main magical work was done. In simpler times, a lot of birthdays likely could be traced back to such uninhibited celebrations.

She drew deep breaths, centering. She’d cast her circle, called Quarters, let that power fill her, thanked it for its presence. Now she pushed the cowl from her face, untied the silken cord and let the velvet robe drop from her naked body. On a nearby tree, she saw the gleam of moonlight on Cathair’s feathers, the flash of his eye as it became crimson, affected by the magic swirling around the protected circle.

Here she could let it free, the succubus and the witch, the flow of the power bathing her in heat, making her movements languid. It was here things became still, the world stopping at this one point so she could open herself to whatever wisdom was offered. The Lord and Lady knew her past, her present, her future.

She blamed them for nothing she’d endured. The Wheel was the Wheel…It turned the way it was meant to turn, and everything she was in this moment was because of the path it had taken her. She was strong, Their child in all ways.

As she stilled her mind beneath that light, she let it fill her, became utterly still, waiting to see where it led her, what it had to show her.

Isaac’s face swam up into her mind. She was missing something with him. She saw darkness around the young incubus, uncertainty. Balanced on the knife-edge of survival, he based his decisions on that, not on good or evil, and that was dangerous. It meant he was going to hedge his bets. He was going to play both sides. Right now he was locked down on the compound, but if the female demon reached him, he would do what needed to be done to survive. It could get them all killed, including him.

She suppressed a sigh. Could he be saved? There was no clear answer to that. There might not be enough time for him to build trust, confidence. She could shield him only as much as possible and hope when the female demon was handled, there would be that opportunity for him. She sent a bolstering shot of white light to the young incubus.

The power swirled, making her body sway in a clockwise motion. Closing her eyes, she let its weight settle, steady her, point her to the path. Right to Mikhael.

What did he really want? What were they to each other? She had zero experience in this kind of relationship. She’d never considered having a permanent lover, but he might be offering. Dear Goddess.

Opening her eyes, she stared up at that pale sphere. She wanted him, a feeling that had no end. While she had a blood craving for him, to take his limitless energy, she also wanted to give it back, twine it together until they were one being. It didn’t matter that they’d known each other for three days. She’d been waiting, and so had he. They were the intersect point in the universe for each other, the turning, key moment.

I’ve had a lot of sex, Mikhael. No relationships.

Well, that makes two of us.

A moment was just a moment. It was the only sure thing, and she knew better than to count on more, particularly with who and what she was. But right now, with the moonlight upon her, her woman’s heart and soul wide-open to the Goddess, who understood the female heart like no other…she hoped.

M
IKHAEL HAD EVERY INTENTION OF MATERIALIZING
outside the house, out of sight of guests, but close enough to be inside with her in a matter of a few strides. But when he changed his mind and appeared farther down the winding drive, he realized some internal radar had known she was out here in the forest. It recalled their pleasant time in the tree from the previous day.

Shrugging out of his shirt, he made it disappear, then winged over the trees. Lucifer’s meet had been the expected status report, but something a little more than that as well. The Angel of Darkness knew about everything. When he dismissed Mikhael, he had only one thing to say: “Love
is
the duty, Guardian.”

He wasn’t sure if it had been a warning or an affirmation, but Lucifer wasn’t the chatty type. Mikhael’s mind left that puzzle as he located the power center that marked her location. Silent as an owl, he landed on its outskirts.

The moon basked the clearing with light, and he couldn’t fault the Goddess’s desire for illumination. The robe pooled around Raina’s ankles was a velvet garnish to the pale beauty of the body rising from the crumpled fabric. He could feel the power coursing through the ground, coming at her call.

She was seeking guidance, and if he knew her, it was what to do about Isaac, about him, about those she protected. During this ritual, her shields didn’t exist, all of her given up to the Goddess. She sought answers beyond what pride, ego or her territorial instincts demanded.

She was fully in its grip, the way her head tilted back, eyes closed. Her arms stretched upward, fingers reaching for the sky as she accepted the Goddess’s energy and arched into its current, a naked, feminine hourglass connected to the Earth and all the elements.

Shadows and moonlight swirled around her, a channeling of Dark and Light together. Watching those two forces come together, he found an answer to the question he hadn’t known he’d been asking himself.

When he stepped through the circle, it allowed him passage. He was welcome here. It was a telling thing, because it meant her unconscious welcomed him. She was connected to things beyond the Veil, her body swaying in a slow, clockwise rhythm in the center of the circle, her fingers fluttering.

Then she felt him. She tilted her head down, delicate chin tucked to the left, and he realized it was the same pose as the pencil sketch of the collared beauty on her wall, only her neck was devoid of such a sign of ownership, of possession by a Dominant lover.

Being taller than her, it was easy enough to step up behind her, align their arms, put his fingers in the spaces between her outstretched ones. She hesitated a moment; then she let her fingers curve and clasp his. He felt it then, the melding of Lord and Lady, as if They’d been waiting for the two of them to come together like this. He was aroused; he was moved; he was completely bonded to this witch. Everything made sense, and it had been a long time since everything had made sense.

“This isn’t a Great Rite ceremony,” she said in a throaty voice.

“But it can still be sacred.”

His own voice was unsteady. It created a flash of surprise in those beautiful eyes she turned his way.

The world was a reflection of the souls that inhabited it; a seesaw between Dark and Light, rarely in balance. It kept Guardians like himself and Derek busy. But this one vessel, this woman, represented the best of the Dark and the Light. That was the answer he’d seen in the spiral of moonlight and shadows. She embraced her succubus nature, obeyed and accepted the dark power that was part of it, and tempered it with justice, compassion and laughter.

She was a bad girl with a heart of pure Light.

He was a Dark Guardian who served the Light from the Dark side.

Most of his service required immersion in Dark energy. The core of pure Light, the gift from his angel grandfather, was what twined with his dark inclinations, made him one of Lucifer’s top Dark Guardians, unable to be swayed or corrupted by the influences of the grim world he inhabited, even while using its more violent methods to perform his role.

He knew there was good in the world, though he was steeped in the darker sides. As he’d told Raina, he was more apt to notice and cherish a glimmer of light amid darkness than the blast of the sun at the height of the day. Puppies and innocent babies didn’t interest him. He wasn’t cynical; he just stood apart from it.

Raina connected him. Her darkness, when he clasped it to him, connected him to the fierceness of that light, because she contained both. In this circle, he felt its touch, let it wash through him, purging any debris. Leaving him balanced.

She leaned back against his body, drawing strength from him as the Lord and Lady did from each other. The two axes of the world on their shoulders, their universe. In this sacred circle, there was no reason to argue it, analyze it, refuse it. It was perfection. It was love.

The word came to his lips as it had this morning, but he couldn’t say it. He wasn’t sure if it was because it was too soon for her to hear it or if all his centuries of life hadn’t prepared him to risk the agony of possible rejection. He knew a lot of things about time, though. It passed too fast, but it was also infinite, so there was a choice to be made between the moments seized and the moments savored…and the proper timing for both.

“I need to close the circle,” she murmured.

He released her so she could do that, bid farewell to the elementals who had gathered. He could feel their presence, see their auras, see their slow melting back into the sky, the earth, the forest. The flutter in his peripheral vision had likely been Fae spirits.

There were whole alternate realities in the peripheral vision. A human might see a dragon there, but when he turned in that direction, he would see only a bush shaped a certain way. The dragon was there, however. Right beyond the grasp of the known senses.

He wasn’t surprised the Fae had come to her circle. Raina had the appeal to call up every fantastical creature he knew. Except the unicorns, who stubbornly refused to respond to anything but flaxen-haired virgins.

Their loss.

When Raina completed the circle closing and turned to him, he had her robe in his hands. He slid it over her shoulders, made a quiet noise for her to keep her hands at her sides, and then freed her hair from the collar himself, letting it spill loose and wild over his fingers. Looking at him for a long moment, she retreated to a flat-topped rock he assumed had served as her altar in times past for more concentrated spellwork. She used it now as a seat to steady herself as she began to braid her hair. When a moth fluttered across her nose, she wiggled it to dispel the itch, the passing sense of silken dust. It made him smile. Dropping to a squat near her, he tented his fingers on the ground. “Pretty thing,” he observed.

“The moth?”

“You. Braiding your hair.”

She paused, then kept on with the braiding, but he noticed her rhythm was less smooth. He’d made her self-conscious, a surprise. “No one’s ever called you pretty?”

She nodded. “I’m beautiful, sexy, mesmerizing. Pretty is…comfortable. Emotional.”

Intimate, familiar. She didn’t say that, but he knew that was what she meant. Ironically, neither of them hesitated when it came to physical danger, but they were both overly cautious creatures when it came to emotions.

“
Pretty
is a word a lover uses when he sees more than your outside,” he said. He curled his hand around her bare foot, rubbing his thumb on the arch, then bent and kissed her toes. When he looked up, he could tell he was discomfiting her. Good. He intended to do more of that.

“You
are
beautiful, sexy, mesmerizing. But right now, you’re pretty. When you sleep, you’re pretty. Soft. The other morning, when you were about to go downstairs, Cathair was nattering at you for a treat. You sucked in a breath, rolled your eyes, but you went back and gave him a plum from your fingers while you talked to me. It made your hand sticky, but you waited until he finished. When you bend over to look at something on your desk, you pull your hair to the side. When you pass the hall tree mirror, sometimes you make a face at yourself.”

“You’ve been watching me.” She’d stopped braiding. Reaching up, he unraveled the braid, combed it back out the way he liked it, pressing against her knees as he did so.

“Since the very first moment. There’s a girl there, along with the woman. I like it.”

She didn’t smile. “I see the boy in you as well,” she said. “The one who crushed nuts for my sundae.”

She touched his face, but it was more query than caress. “Men will do romantic things when they’re infatuated, in lust, but they don’t go out of their way on the small things. They go for the grander gestures to seal the deal faster. It’s a very primal game. But you bought peanuts because it was nice, and you thought I’d like it. You have a soft side, Mikhael, a side that likes to please a woman emotionally as well as physically.”

“I’ll deny that to maintain my reputation.”

“Doesn’t change the truth of it.”

“Also doesn’t change what I am.”

“No. It doesn’t.” Drawing a breath, she slid from the rock. Sensing the mood shift, Mikhael rose, facing her.

“Give me the truth, once and for all,” she said, a steadiness to her gaze that belied the tension he sensed in her. “What is this, Mikhael? You came here to do a job, and, after it’s done, you’re leaving. Yet you’re courting me. You’re stirring up emotions. You say I’m not a project, the way Ruby was, but what other purpose can you have for drawing me out this way? You say it’s different for you, but how am I supposed to believe that, knowing who and what you are?”

“If you’re looking for a guarantee, Raina, I can’t give you one. But I’m not playing a game.”

“I know there are no guarantees. You made it clear that your duty, your obligation, the oath you’ve taken, it comes first. So how do I fit into that plan? Or do you want me to believe you’ve become moony over a succubus, the madam of a bordello? Something so tainted that neither Hell nor Heaven claim it?”

“That’s not true.” His temper sparked, unexpectedly. “You don’t believe that about yourself.”

“I don’t believe it, but a lot of others do.”

“What I feel is what I feel. I want you.”

“Today, for a year? Forever? Or do you have a specific contractual term in mind? How long do I pencil you in for?”

Forever, if you know what’s good for you.
He considered her, his brows drawing down. “You’re picking a fight for no good reason, so what’s really bugging you, Raina? This isn’t a fucking session with a client, where you orchestrate it based on their needs and hourly rate.”