The Queen of Swords: A Paranormal Tale of Undying Love (18 page)

“We have never met, but I have heard stories.” Maud sat back in her chair, her expression growing thoughtful. She steepled her fingers and tapped them against her chin. Cat waited, pulse
accelerated. Finally, the elder witch said, “Reversing the curse will not be an easy task.”

Despite the warning, h
ope sprang into Cat’s heart. “How do I do it? Please tell me.”

“Your friend—Graham, was it?
—must kill him using a stake fashioned from a hawthorn branch, then consume the ash of his heart in a tea brewed from the berries of the same tree. Afterward, he must bury the wizard’s remains head downward under the tree and build a cairn over the grave. And finally, he must use the tree’s thorns to cast a charm to protect the site.”

The hawthorn thing made sense. Hawthorns were members of the rose family and, like their cousins, produced thorns, flowers, and berries, all of which served multiple magical and medicinal purposes. In Celtic myth, hawthorns staved off evil, eased heartbreak, attracted faeries, and protected the portals into the otherworld realm of the
Fae.

Blinking
across the desk at her elder, Cat’s mind sifted through various scenarios for gaining the upper hand with Fitzgerald. He was, after all, a powerful mage with the ability to sense Graham’s nearness and emotions. Even with the help of witchcraft, ensnaring him long enough to do as Maud instructed would prove challenging at best. Still, she was game to try if it meant freeing him from both his curse and Fitzgerald.

“And, if we should succeed?
He will become human again?”

Maud nodded, holding her gaze. “He will be just as he was.” With a small smile, she added, “Only, let us hope, a bit wiser
for his time and trouble.”

Rising from the chair, she started
for the door before turning back. “One more thing. Would you happen to know how to bind a
gancanagh
?”

The older witch
looked at her over her spectacles. “Male or female?”

“Both, actually.” What the hell? She may as well have the knowledge on hand if Avery got into serious trouble with Benedict. She was still angry
with her friend, but not enough to wish her harm.

“I believe I have a suitable binding spell somewhere in this chaos
.” Maud waved a hand at the overflowing bookcase. “But I will need time to track it down. Come back in a couple of days and I’ll have it for you.”

Li
ghtened by relief, Cat thanked her colleague and left the office, heading in the direction of the library. Once there, she set up her laptop and fired up the internet. To level the playing field, she’d need to lure Fitzgerald into a trap of some sort. A summoning spell seemed the obvious method. Unfortunately, she’d never called an evil entity before. Yes, she’d summoned Graham, but he didn’t count because he wasn’t evil. So, to be on the safe side, she’d better do her research, starting with what she might be dealing with.

Calling up the Google window, she typed “
dusios
” in the search box. The query returned 459,000 results, most of them having nothing to do with incubi. The first link did seem relevant, so she clicked on it and scanned the introductory paragraph.

Dusii (singular dusios) were a breed of
Unseelie faery known to rampantly seduce both women and men and drink human blood. Similar to the woodland gods Pan and Sylvan, though human in appearance, they descended from the
Tuatha de Danann
(the Children of the Goddess Danu), a divine race of magical immortals driven into the otherworld during the Christian campaign to purge Scotland and Ireland of paganism.

Danu,
the most ancient of all the Celtic deities, was the Divine Mother who birthed all living things into being. Her children (the
Tuatha De
) also were divine beings who were skilled in the ways of magic. When they arrived in Ireland, on dark clouds that blocked out the sun for three days, they brought with them four sacred treasures: a stone, a spear, a sword, and a cauldron. After retreating “underground”, these magical immortals became known as “the Fae”.

Moving her cursor to the search frame,
she typed in “spell to summon an incubus.” Google returned, to her delight—and alarm—18.6 million results. The first link took her to a discussion board called “Mystic Banana,” where someone had requested the same sort of spell.

To her dismay, almost all the responses were warnings about the dangers of consorting with incubi, which, according to one commenter, “had cocks big enough to tear their sexual partners in two.” Shuddering at the thought, she conjured an image of Angus Og. Lust and heartache burned in equal measure. Wee Angus was far from “wee,” but hardly
big enough to tear her in two. Though, admittedly, he’d done his best on several occasions.

Swallowing, she hit the back button before moving to the next link, which took her to Spells.com. There, she found a long list of links promising spells to bind everything from vampires and fire dragons to goblins and dark angels, but nothing specifically to protect against
dusii
. Moving on, she tried another link and another. Finally, she hit pay dirt in the form of a spell advertised as being from the Victorian era. With eager eyes, she scanned the instructions.

1) Make a circle using a white cord and place around it five equidistant black candles

2) Outside the circle, place five protective talismans and sigils, and make a second circle of salt and protective herbs

3) Center yourself and visualize the circle protecting
you and separating you from the rest of your dwelling, and

4) Lay down inside the circle in the pentagram position (arms straight out and legs apart)
and summon the incubus by name

A final note instructed, “The spell must be cast at the new moon.”

Her heart sank. The new moon was still two weeks away. Might there be something else she could cast sooner? She searched some more, but found nothing as good, so she resigned herself to the delay. Waiting might actually prove providential since Graham was safe in Scotland, she was safe here, and another two weeks would give her time to both set her snare for Fitzgerald and finish the term and her doctorate. Somewhat consoled, she copied and pasted the spell into a word doc, filed it away, and double-clicked on the folder containing her dissertation.

Chapter
14: The Full Metal Jacket of Kink

He awoke suffocating with angst, not knowing why. When he tried to move, he began to see. He was on a padded bed-like table, flat on his back, spread-eagle, and bound. The silver manacles clamping his wrists and ankles burned like branding irons. Yanking on them, he grimaced against the pain, but the restraints held tight.

The room
, dark and cool, showed him only shadowy shapes. A bouquet of smells pricked his nostrils. Tart vinegar, mellow oak, fruity wine, savory rodent. Was he still in the wine cellar? Squinting, he forced his vision to adjust to the lack of light. The casks and dusty racks of bottles lining the porous walls confirmed his suspicions.

Confusion clouded his mind. He was dimly aware of a throbbing in his groin
. Actual pain, not the needful ache of unsated lust. Looking down, he saw flesh. Pale, naked, hairless flesh. Toes, knees, balls, limp prick, belly button, nipples. The body was like his, but also different in odd ways. The hairlessness, for one. The balls, for another. These looked red and swollen and had some kind of cuff around the base to make them stand up like a squeezed balloon.

Bloody fucking hell.

What had Shelob done to him?

His bowels knotted. A fine sweat broke out across his skin. Above him, a row of lights came on, nearly blinding him. Snapping his face toward the wall, his ghosted gaze landed upon a table laid with a buffet of
...sex toys. And not the fun kind. Chastity devices, ball stretchers, crushes, penile cages, and assorted cock rings, genital clamps, electrodes, and urethral inserts. Anal plugs of graduating sizes lay beside them like crudités. His sphincter clenched involuntarily, its soreness telling him he’d already been used as the dip.

Suddenly queasy, h
e swallowed.

Having been
a sexual predator for two centuries, he understood the allure of variety. Vanilla sex got dull pretty damn quick, especially without feelings involved. So, he’d branched out to spice things up. Bondage and various other forms of kink were no big deal, but he drew the line at being buggered and having his junk abused.

His heart lurched at the creak of iron hinges. A moment later, in sauntered Shelob in a full-length kimono of emerald silk
. Elaborate embroidery trimmed the edges.

Glaring at her,
he jerked his restraints. “What the devil are you playing at?”

“I’m sick of being rejected
.”

She stepped between his legs, making every muscle in his body tense.

“What have you been doing to me?”

“I’ll give
you three guesses.” She dragged a fingernail up his taint hard enough to make him jump. “And the first two don’t count.”

Memories flickered of the twisted things she’d done to him. Caging his cock, paddling his balls, sticking things in his orifices.
Clamping his teeth together, he swallowed hard. No wonder his cods felt bruised. He knew she got off on CBT, knew she had a secret chamber hereabouts where she pulled the wings off her flies, so to speak, but she’d never tried any of her sick shit on him. Until now, anyway. Handcuffs, aye. And that wee riding crop which, admittedly, felt pretty sweet when she flicked it just so against his
frenulum preputii
...

B
ut nothing like this.

Never the full metal jacket of kink.

Gritting his teeth, he closed his eyes and dropped his head on the table. A sharp painful whack on his trussed-up nads snapped them open again. Wide open.
Bloody hell.
She had that fucking paddle again. He curled his lip and snarled at her. She slipped the robe off her shoulders and let it drop to the floor, exposing forest-green bustier and garters, a barely-there thong, and thigh-high fishnet stockings. Eyes locked with his, she ran her hands over her voluptuous assets.

“Tell me
you don’t want this.”

Even as he denied it,
lust surged through his genitals.

Her expression hardened. “That’s too bad. Because it’s this or nothing.”

“Let me go.”

“So
you can run out on me?” She laughed. “I don’t think so.”

Loathing squeezed his chest and narrowed his eyes. “We’re not a couple
you dozy wee bitch, as I’ve been telling you for more than a hundred years.”

“
You’re wrong, lover,” she told him. “In fact, we’ll be married soon.”

He coughed. “Married? Are
you mad? You’re the last woman I’d ever bloody marry.”

She smacked his balls with the paddle.
“We’ll see about that.”

“Let me go, Branwen
, or so help me God—”

She laughed and whacked hi
s scrotum so hard he nearly passed out. “Really, Graham. You’re in no position to be making threats.”

* * *

She was still at the library, still working on her dissertation, and making serious strides, a minor miracle considering the gnawing in her midsection. It pulsed like a silent alarm in her solar plexus, the center of psychic intuition, and seemed connected somehow to Graham. He felt strangely nearby, which was just wishful thinking, right? It was four in the afternoon. If he’d departed at dawn as planned, he’d be in Druimdeurfait by now. Unless he didn’t go. She flung the hope away before it could take root. Of course he’d gone. If he’d changed his mind about going, she surely would have heard from him by now.

So what was with the weird feeling?
Taking a breath, she sank into it, seeking clarity. An image twinkled briefly behind her eyes. Graham on a table in restraints.
What the hell?
He was in Scotland, safe and sound. She rubbed her eyes, afraid it might be a stress-induced delusion. Had the pressure of getting her dissertation done compiled with him leaving and the looming threat of Lord Fitzgerald put a crack in her sanity?

The pulsing in her gut grew more insistent. It was definitely a distress signal of some sort. But what sort? She searched her mind for an explanation, coming up with the only one that made sense.
He’d said the blood exchange would enable him to feel when she was in trouble. Did it also work in reverse? Was he in trouble? Was he still here in Wickenham? Had Fitzgerald shown up? Was Branwen up to her old tricks?

Her
blood pressure escalated as she remembered the raven’s threat from last night. She drew a deep breath and blew it out, trying to clear her mind and relax her spasming middle. The pulsing persisted. She bit her lip. What to do? If Graham was in trouble, she needed to help him somehow.

But how?

As her mind chased the possibilities, she packed up her things, returned the borrowed books to the reserve desk, and left the library. She hurried down the High Street toward the cottage, cursing the fact she’d elected to walk today of all days. With each step, the feeling grew stronger. More images flashed. Branwen standing over him dressed like a dominatrix. She felt a hot flush of possessiveness. And protectiveness. He belonged to her, dammit. And she would not stand for that faery bitch or anybody else abusing him.

She was in a sweat by the time she reached home. Hurrying up the brick path to the rose-covered door, she fumbled in her satchel for her keys. With
clumsy hands, she attempted to separate the house key from the others on the ring. Another image flashed. Oh dear goddess, Branwen was poking some sort of wire into Angus Og! Fury exploded in Cat’s chest. She tried to stick the key in the lock, but her hands shook too hard. After several bumbling attempts, she finally got the bloody door open.

She dropped her satchel just inside, ran down the hall to her room, and pulled her grimoire from the shelf above the altar. There wasn’t time to cast a circle, draw sigils, mix up herbs, and recite multiple incantations. She flipped through the pages, searching for a quick and dirty summoning spell, feeling like she’d swallowed an acid-soaked bag of rocks.
Come on. Come on.
Her hands shook as she turned the pages. She was almost sure she’d written down something a few weeks ago that would do the trick.

Finding the charm she sought at last, she selected a red candle and quickly anointed herself and the candle with the same oils she’d used on Friday night. As she flamed the wick with her disposable lighter, she recited the incantation.

“Summoning with oils and candlelight,

Let him come now into
my sight.”

She repeated the words twice more before climbing on the bed and hugging her knees to her chest. Within seconds, the air began to shimmer. Her heart pounded excitedly as she watched him take shape. The eyes appeared first
, two luminous pools of whisky. The sight awoke something carnal deep in her belly. A face began to form around the eyes. Angular, chiseled, beautiful. The lips were full and sensual, the jaw strong, the cheekbones high and prominent, the hair long and silky. The body came next. Broad shoulders, powerful arms, graceful hands. The waist was trim, the hips narrow, the legs long.

As glorious as always, he took her breath away. There was just one problem. It wasn’t Graham who stood before her. It was the dark angel from her recurring nightmare.

“Cathleen Fingal, I presume?” He arched a perfect black eyebrow. “My, but you have a persistent soul.”

Hugging herself tighter, she tried
not to look him in the eye. What had she done wrong? Why had Lord Fitzgerald answered her summons instead of Graham? Then, she realized her mistake. She hadn’t used a name in the incantation, leaving the door open for any entity within hearing range. A careless, stupid, rookie mistake.

Swallowing, she asked, voice squeaking, “What do
you want with me?”

“It isn’t
you I want, witch.” His voice was like ice wine, sweet, intoxicating, and icy. “You’re merely a means to an end.”

His eyes pulled like magnets, making not lo
oking at him harder than hell.

She swallowed hard.
“What end?”

“The surrender of his soul.”

* * *

Branwen had forced
him to drink tea laced with opium, so he was in the midst of a blissful, twilight dream in which Caitriona lay in his arms, pliant, warm, and smelling of violets. Her breasts were heavy and swollen, her nipples as dark as treacle. He reached between her legs, finding succulent warmth. As his fingers played, she emitted a satisfied moan, a spur to his swelling desire.

He liked the effects of opiates, liked the euphoria and the lucid dreams, liked how colors seemed more vibrant, how music touched him so deeply his heart swelled with awe. Back in the Victorian era, he preyed on opium addicts and often took laudanum, but stopped when the line began to
blur between dream and reality.

Beneath him, the mattress was hard and unforgiving, so they must be in her room at the convent. He felt her mouth, petal-soft, come down on his, felt her tongue, firmly persuasive, parting his lips.
Accepting it eagerly, he drew it deeper as he caressed it with his own. The kiss grew more torrid, his need for her more insistent. As she pulled away and slithered down his body, he ached for the loss of her mouth.

“I’ve missed
you.” Her voice was low and husky. “Have you missed me?”

“Oh, aye. Aye,
m’aingael
. So much.”

A groan escaped him as
her lips closed around the most innervated part of his anatomy. She’d never done this before, and the one time he’d attempted to pleasure her with his mouth, she’d pulled away, calling it “vile and debased.” And now, here she was, applying her tongue with startling finesse. Hadn’t she said she’d learned from the Internet? He swallowed the laugh tickling his throat. These were strange days to be alive. Very strange indeed.

* * *

She listened, fighting the strong urge to meet his gaze, as Lord Fitzgerald explained. After mastering the dark arts to the extent humanly possible, he summoned Madoc Morfryn and struck a deal. The Unseelie Lord’s magical assistance in exchange for the wizard’s immortal soul. Long an apostate, Fitzgerald believed he’d gotten the better end of the deal until, at the moment of death, he found himself indentured to the Dark Faery King for the rest of eternity. He could return to the mortal world for only a few months every hundred years, to claim more souls for his lord and master.

Those he drained to the point of death lost their souls; those he transfused with his blood did not. Transfusing
, thus, was forbidden to him. Why? Because the soul of a transfused
dusios
would break his bond of servitude. But the soul must be willingly surrendered, something Graham, a devout Catholic in life, would never do. So, Fitzgerald let him believe he’d lost his soul, hoping one day to compel him to give it up with the help of a witch empowered by love.

Things now made sense.
The wizard must have made the same request of Caitriona and Catharine and then killed them when refused to do what he wanted. And he’d do the same to her when she refused, which, of course, she would. She’d sooner die than see her twin flame stripped of his soul.