In the Company of Witches (39 page)

She flushed, the green-gold eyes firing. “I didn’t say it was.”

“No, but you’re not defining it any more than I am. You’ve never had a male you couldn’t completely control. The bitch of it is, you’ve been looking for someone to take the reins your whole life.”

He stepped forward; she backed up, into the unyielding trunk of a live oak. When he slid a finger down her cheek, he pressed against the soft skin, made her feel that firm touch under her chin, down her throat so she raised it, swallowed, though her jaw was tight, the eyes still angry, uncertain. “That’s the real problem, isn’t it, Raina? You want someone to take control, but nothing scares you more, because you’ve been in a situation where they did all the wrong things. You can’t control how you feel about me, or how I feel about you. We’re not always going to be able to predict where that will take us. If you’ve never had that experience before, why is it so difficult to believe it might be the same for me?”

B
ECAUSE YOU’RE A
D
ARK
G
UARDIAN
. B
ECAUSE YOU’RE
not saying it outright. Because I need to hear it and believe it.
But Raina was too damn cowardly to ask him to say it. If he refused, she would feel like a cat who’d stepped out in front of a semi. If he did say it, and she heard the lie in his voice, she would feel like a whore in truth. She’d have to act like one to laugh it off, to take this back to safe footing, and that wasn’t where she wanted to be with Mikhael. She wanted to be real with him, now and always.

He was right. She was picking a fight over nothing, though it was motivated by something a lot larger. She was in a situation she didn’t know how to handle. While it had given her clarity, tranquility, for one moment, the ritual had also made her vulnerable, and reality was intruding, the ghosts of the past. It was all bubbling too close to the surface. She was going to say things, things that would give him the ability to destroy her. She was falling in love with him. She wouldn’t compound that absurdity by believing the same had happened to him.

“I need some space. I’m going back to the house.” She said it without anger, but he held her there, his voice low.

“Don’t let him keep you chained in that cage, Raina. Tell me what you want.”

Her throat ached, but she managed the words in a steady voice. “If neither of us is willing to put our feelings out there, then we’re not ready to trust one another. It’s too soon. Let’s leave it there for now. But I need…I just need to go. Let me go.”

She pulled free and did what she swore no man would ever make her do. She ran from him.

18

I
T DIDN’T MATTER WHAT
M
IKHAEL MADE HER FEEL
, how he unleashed those deep cravings in her to trust, to surrender, to submit. She depended on herself, remained in control, and that was how it was going to stay.

Despite the manic pep talk, she was shaking when she came in the house. Li was doing his yoga, his chest flat on the floor in a way that made her hip joints ache just looking at him. Straightening to his elbows, he sent her a thumbs-up. “Good timing. Bachelor party just pulled out.” Then he frowned, looking at her face. “You okay?”

She wanted to say yes, because she was the one who could handle anything. They never needed to worry she was going to fall apart or let them down. Damn it, it was just an infatuation. One that had gone beyond skin deep into the bones, such that they were rattling like a skeleton in its grave on a desolate, windy night.

A chill swept through her. Li snapped upright, his eyes narrowing, alarm spreading over his features. Raina turned toward the closed door, felt the vibration.

“Get down!” She spun, launched herself at Li and took them both back to the floor. The front windows exploded inward as she leaped, a million projectiles she warded with a fast shield that caught most of them. The rest buried into her flesh like tiny arrowheads, tearing holes in her robe, damn it. Her favorite ritual garment, blessed by more than a thousand full-moon ceremonies.

She sprang to her feet, yanking the athame out of one of the deep pockets. “Stay here,” she ordered Li. “Keep the rest of them inside.”

The ground was still quivering as she ran to the door. The stained glass transom, an original piece more than a century old, was in pieces on the floor. She was going to have someone’s hide. Then she caught a glimpse of what was happening on the lawn, and none of that mattered.

“Raina, wait!” She heard someone at the top of the second-level steps, perhaps Marisa, call her name. Yanking open the door, she flew down the stairs and went to Mikhael, lying motionless by the destroyed fountain. Nearly half a ton of exploding concrete had hit him. His skull was a bloody mess, likely caved in, and he was covered by enough of the debris she knew his spine had to be snapped, bones broken. He was sprawled on his stomach, all that strength and beauty limp and lifeless. She wanted to roll him over, wanted to see what she could do, but there was too much to move and no time to do it.

He was a Dark Guardian, damn it. Nothing could kill him, right? He was just knocked out. She had to buy him space and vital time for his supersonic healing powers to kick in, that was all. Taking a stance over him, she gripped the athame and channeled all the power she had into it, preparing herself for what was coming up her driveway now.

How the hell had
that
gotten through the protections around her place, her own and Mikhael’s?

It looked like a human female, followed by four mutated creatures unmistakably part of the demon ranks. Thugs to do the things the female didn’t have the patience or time to do for herself. Of course, from the power Raina felt emanating from her, she could do pretty much any damn thing she wanted to do. She was looking at the harrowing evidence of it at her feet.

Reversing the channel of power in the athame, Raina brought it down around herself and Mikhael, beefed it up to the highest power setting possible. Just in time.

The female disappeared. A blink later, she phased in front of Raina, no more than an inch outside that protection. The phasing looked like the snow of a television coming back into focus, all the atoms reassembling themselves, and pushed against Raina’s shields like a fucking ton of bricks.

Holy shit.
A phase demon. They were extinct, ancient beings long gone from the world, like the Titans. Apparently not. Some twisted god must have unearthed one, just like Zeus unleashing the kraken. Or worse, this demon had unleashed herself, gone completely off the reservation.

The she-demon touched the edge of the protection, watched it sizzle along her fingertip. Raina cinched it in closer to both her and Mikhael, because though a phase demon could phase through any protection field, hence their name, they couldn’t occupy the same space as the one they were attacking. Unfortunately, that limited Raina’s options. She was all too aware her succubi and incubi were now entirely vulnerable because the net of their protection was a perimeter, not a cloak, and there was no time or energy to spare to change that.

As the finger phased out of existence, then came back into focus, the female cocked her head. She had the large gold eyes of a rabid tiger and fangs just like one, which elongated now until they curved under her chin. Her nails likewise lengthened.

“You need a manicure,” Raina said evenly. “If you’re trying to scare me, I’ve had clients with scarier appendages than that.”

The female smiled, and it was the stuff of nightmares, like a clown doll in a child’s room. The toy with a harmless grin that looked entirely different when the child woke in the middle of the night and stared at it through the dark.

“Isaac said you were a badass, afraid of nothing.” The demon sounded so much like Bette Davis, Raina was certain she’d stolen the diva’s voice from some graveyard archive. “But I’d expect no less of the sex demon who took down Elceus. Drained him like a husk, broke your own chains and swore you’d never be chained again, didn’t you?”

Raina arched a brow. “You’ve been reading my Facebook profile. Sorry; I didn’t catch yours. Name?”

“Erica.” The demoness blinked. Her lashes were long and thick, drawing more attention to the mesmerizing eyes. Raina made sure she didn’t linger there long. Erica might look like she was slouching in a dangerously casual way, but she was pushing hard against those protections, testing them. Raina’s limbs quivered as she did her best to hold without appearing to commit any effort to it. At this stage of the game, it was all about the posturing.

“Erica? Soap opera fan?”

“You’re showing your age, dear.”

“I get the Soap channel. Full cable service out here, thanks to the barn-sized satellite. Are you here for the spank-me package we offer, or do you have another agenda?”

“I’m here for two things. Isaac. And you.”

She felt a touch in her mind. Cathair, in the shadows of the tower balcony.

Get Derek. Go get him. Go now.
It was dark, he had the cover, and it was the best plan. She needed help.

When he took flight, he was as silent as a whispering wind. It didn’t matter. Erica’s gaze snapped up.

She sees you.

Cathair shot high into the night sky. When Raina dared to pull her attention from Erica for a blink, she saw a shadow form behind him. Reacting fast, she sent a ball of white flame at that shadow and repelled Erica with a propulsion blast at the same moment, hoping to knock both back a few paces.

There was a shriek in the sky, and an eagle shot out of the flame. Beating his wings and somersaulting until he put out the fire, he closed in on the raven. As they plunged into the forest together, Raina heard the cacophony of the birds engaging, then Cathair’s mortal cry. Pain exploded in her chest.

No. No.
Raina snarled as Erica took advantage of her distraction to land a blow under her guard, a jolt nasty enough to unbalance her. She threw up her shielding again but had to go to one knee to brace it, holding herself over Mikhael’s prone body.
Oh, Cathair. Sweet old bird. Damn it.

As she crouched, panting, she used the point of her wrist to swipe the blood from the glass off her forehead. Her mind was spinning over the options; oh so helpfully, her adversary was already cataloging them for her.

“You won’t last very long this way,” Erica said, strolling around the fountain remains. “Your every movement underscores the weakness of your position.”

She disappeared when the ground erupted beneath her and tree roots from the nearby live oaks clawed up out of the earth, their jagged edges ready to rend demon flesh.

“Underscore that, bitch,” Raina muttered. When Erica’s voice came from safely within the tree cover a few hundred feet away, she felt some small satisfaction, but not enough. It had probably been stupid, dropping her protection for even that bare moment, because putting it back up was like starting a car. It used more fuel. Erica’s thugs were circling, the pack waiting until the alpha bitch wore the prey down so they could move in for the kill. They were close enough for her to see they were horribly maimed. Nothing to affect their strength, but grotesque alterations. Extra fingers, slits around their eyes and noses, chains of tumors around necks and wrists like macabre jewelry.

“Some people will put a litter of unwanted puppies in a burlap sack with a few bricks,” Erica said in that starlet voice. “Though the puppies are whining and crying, the human ignores them, doesn’t care. He drops that sack into a lake. Walks away, knowing the puppies are in there, fighting for their lives, fighting to breathe.”

Erica phased just outside Raina’s protective cloak once more. This time she stayed partially phased, so Raina couldn’t get the jump on her. Though her unworldly gaze sparked with heat, it chilled Raina with its pleasurable malice. Evil was her fetish; malevolence got Erica off. “What you protect in that house are a bunch of unwanted puppies.”

Raina’s eyes narrowed. “They’ve done nothing to you.”

“You know that saying,
Kill them all, let God sort them out
? I really don’t give a shit. I assume you do. You and I both know your protection isn’t doing a damn thing for them right now.” The she-demon glanced down at Mikhael. “I’m not of a mind to kill a Dark Guardian. For one thing, they’re incredibly difficult to kill, like one of those campy slasher films. Everything you do to them, they just pop right back up, eventually. Unless you hack them into pieces, take the body parts at least a thousand miles apart, and burn them with oil. So much work.”