Wicked Paradise (25 page)

After an interminable time, Ryan lifted his head. The lines bracketing his eyes, creasing his forehead bespoke his inner turmoil. “I’m afraid of inflicting demon hunter Ryan O’Rourke on your beautiful, unsullied soul, your giving heart.”

“No. No,” Morgan whispered. “Why in heavens do you think that?” She climbed out of the hot spring and walked to him, heedless of her nakedness and her vulnerabilities that no longer mattered. She cleared a spot on the stony ground and knelt beside him. Was he afraid his magic might sully hers once they bonded fully? She rested her palms on his knees, his legs tensing at her touch. “We will be united through a pure, untainted bond.”

Two creases of worry appeared between his eyes. “What about my ether? Too much and it can kill.”

She squeezed his knees, quelling the electricity that zinged along their minute tie. “Remember, only Druids of ancient blood can tolerate star magic. I am one of them.”

Ryan leaned his head against the boulder. He fisted his hands on the ground, his knuckles stretched white. He knew she could handle his ether magic. She’d already proven that during WindWraith’s thrall. Whatever bothered him concerned his other magical abilities.

Dank cave air invaded her as noxious as her foreboding. “What innate ability do you hide from me?” she asked frankly. She drew her knees up to cover her chest and linked her arms around them. Squeezing into a ball, she wanted to shield herself from the storm erupting in Ryan’s residual magic fluttering in her middle.

He picked at loose crystal fragments on the ground. “How exactly does the final bond work? What will happen?”

“You’re stalling.”

“Answer me.”

“Your magic will fill me, and mine will fill you.” Her arms tightened around her legs. “I will be able to draw upon your magic. You will be able to draw upon mine—without a sending. The receiver will have many times the power, while the giver’s power will drain only slightly.” She paused, pressing fingers to her forehead. “Your magic will not fully be a part of me, nor mine a part of you. You have to consciously draw from the accessible power.” The long forgotten ritual arose in her mind. “Except for the power that melds during heightened emotions.” A fierce blush rose up Morgan’s neck. “My elements will complete you. Yours will complete me.”

Silent and somber, Ryan soaked up her words. “Elemental or innate?”

“Elemental. You won’t have my ability to prophesize or any of my other innate abilities. I won’t have your tracking ability and whatever else you were inherently born with.”

A smile tugged the corners of his lips. “Damn, I was hoping I’d be the first Druid of my time who could tell the future.”

Morgan gawked in disbelief. “You have no seers in your time?”

“A
true
seer hasn’t existed since before my mother was born. They were the first to succumb to Fomorian control. Before the wars, they led us into ambushes with false visions. I was still cleaning up the distrust they created under my father’s leadership. I outlawed the last seers from our ranks when I took power.” He frowned. “Our magic has disappeared. Fomorians have seen to that. That’s why I must go back. I have to—”

She held his angular face in her small hands. “What do you truly fear?”

“Hurting you,” he whispered, dropping a soft kiss on her palm. “You hating me.”

“That will never happen.” Despite the splattering of the waterfall and the boiling hot spring, silence fell in the cave like a soft blanket of snow.

A vein jumped on Ryan’s temple. “I have the ability to draw black magic into me and subvert it into my own magic. I can alter it and use it to destroy evil. The black magic stays with me, increasing my powers. I don’t know of any other sorcerer who can do that. That’s why I’m the best assassin. The reason why the pact was made. That’s why my people need me.”

Speechless, Morgan collapsed back onto her heels. Outright lunacy! No one alive had such capabilities.
No, Goddess, no.
Dread formed a tight band around her chest as her heart galloped to escape it.

Sundry thoughts and emotions tossed about in her mind. WindWraith’s haunting words vaulted to the forefront. He knew. The nasty demon knew Ryan held ether. Did the bloody bastard know about this dangerous talent? Jumping up, she tried to distance herself from Ryan but he grabbed her wrist. She tussled against his firm hold. About to lash out at him, a knife-like pain struck her head. Slowly, she felt her body wilting. Ryan’s strong arms offered little comfort as a black void swallowed her mind.

Chapter 24

Fluctuating bands of air tied Morgan to a flat stone surface in semi-darkness. She struggled against her constraints using magic that refused to obey. Bleary-eyed, she inspected her surroundings, not recognizing the narrow burrow she lay in. Diffused lights glowed in the space like stagnant fireflies. Where was she? How did she get there? Cotton blossomed in her mind, and she strained to recall the last thing she’d done, but was unable to remember much beyond entering the great cavern with Ryan.

The air bands thinned and she attempted to rise slowly, realizing she had barely enough headroom to sit. The right path out of the tunnel led to an abyss of midnight. A faint glow lit the left path. Distant cascading water hinted that a waterfall resided beyond the glowing tunnel. Was it the main cavern?

The vision was so lifelike she had a difficult time judging reality from her dreamlike state, especially when she could almost feel sweat on her skin. The air shackles finally dissipated and she choked back a frightened cry as she slipped off the raised dais. Fear shivered down her back, and she wished she had something to cover her nakedness. Morgan knew this wasn’t real.

An energy force, combined with Morgan’s intuition, persuaded her to take the narrowest path on her left. Sticking out her arms, she tested freedom away from the stone slab and found no resistance. To avoid ramming her head into a wall, she inched through the dim tunnel, not knowing if she headed toward the crystal cave or elsewhere. The alluring force coaxed her onward, toward a fountain of power.
It had to be the beautiful, big cave!
Not even her bond to Ryan carried such intense power. Surely, WindWraith hadn’t gained the energy to draw her to him, had he?

Magic marched along her bond to Ryan, blossoming into desire. Need ripped through Morgan in a mix of pleasure-pain. She wanted more. Wished it would end. Fire ignited her blood. Flames flicked her thighs, and her nipples hardened into aching pebbles.

“Ryan!” she cried. “Is that you? What’s happening?”

Once his name left her lips, the painful erotic teasing withdrew. Fiery ropes battered her backside, and Morgan shrieked against the stinging lashes cutting into her skin. Her external shields vaulted into place. Too late.

A whooshing, gurgling laugh echoed in the cave.

WindWraith.

No! Not again, whoreson!
The Fomorian fed off her memories, making her believe it was Ryan. Power vaulted up from her core. Morgan erected a protective barrier in her mind and reinforced those outside her body. The walls disintegrated before she completed them. Shaking with frustration, she tried again and the external pressure shredded her shields. Fury forced another tortured scream from her throat. Fighting the vision and her attack as one, she tried to wake up, but the evil held her under its spell.

As quick as the lashes began, they whipped away as one. Enraged and terrified, Morgan brushed tears off her cheeks. No longer in the tunnel she’d been crawling through, she lay naked on an elevated platform in a larger cave. Invisible belts strapped down her arms, torso, and ankles. She focused within to call her magic, but her powers were imprisoned, unreachable, lost. Sickening waves of terror swelled up from her hollow stomach.

Pools of crimson liquid burned the air. Sounds of water tumbling down boulders, babbling over rocks wafted to her from beyond her vision. The dim light enabled her to make out her prison’s features. The first thing she noticed was the deadened crystals plastering the walls. So solidly black, no light penetrated or reflected off them. A pinprick glowed in a fissure in the wall, drawing Morgan’s attention to it like a moth to a flame. Shuffling noises at the foot of her dais captured her attention before she managed to investigate the pale dot.

Her bond to Ryan whispered in her mind. “Ryan?” She craned her neck against her constraints to peer beyond her platform. More gray gloom.

“Yes, love.” Devoid of emotion, his familiar voice fell flat.

“I can’t move or reach my magic.”

“I have your magic.” He laughed in a smugly sinister manner. “As you wished me to.”

Barbed vines snaked around her heart. That wasn’t her Ryan. Had WindWraith possessed him? If so, how could WindWraith withstand Ryan’s ether?

“What are you doing?” Her voice wobbled.

“It’s time to end this farce and return home.”

The Ryan replica loomed to her left, his features melting into the darkness. Air swooped over her flesh at his approach, as cold and ominous as a swirl of snow on a winter’s gravesite.

Uselessly, she strained at her invisible bonds. Her head felt like dead weight, her fingers frozen in place. “What do you mean?”

Ryan laughed again, the sound grating and vile. This wasn’t the Ryan O’Rourke she had fallen in love with.

The monster touched her bare breast, his fingers cold, bony, and sinister. “I told you I would return home to fulfill my duties as Druid leader and assassin.”

Rough fingers smoothed down her stomach, scratched over her scars. Morgan shrank inward, tried to close her mind to the invasion. “You can’t leave this island.” Her voice cracked and she gulped down her mounting horror.

“Ah. You are wrong.” He bent his head and pressed an icy kiss on her stomach. “We will leave the island bound together for eternity, as you so crave.”

“How can we get off this island?” Morgan tested his receptiveness.

“My love, you know as well as I that one more earthquake will uproot the crystal barrier. Then we can call Avalon’s strong magic and destroy WindWraith. Once we do that, the world is ours.”

Morgan cringed. Avalon?
Ryan means to destroy Avalon for his own gain!
“Why do you need so much power to leave the island?”

“
We
will return to my land, filled with unimaginable power.”

“You aren’t Ryan!” Morgan burst out. “You taunt me, WindWraith. You’ll never leave this island. Do you hear me? Not in Ryan’s body, not in mine!”

Bright light burst in Morgan’s skull. Magic shimmered around her, infused every cell of her being. Light and airy, she floated in a vast ebony sea of diamond stars. Energy blazed in her blood as she zipped through the night sky. The thirteen stones on Avalon’s highest ground flitted by, standing majestically in a tempest of lightning. A strong, firm hand clasped hers. She turned to see Ryan floating beside her, guiding her through the winking stars. Welcoming, embracing, his smile shot her full of love and joy.

“You’ll come home with me and feed me your magic, little raven. That’s the reason fate brought us together. Without it, we cannot leave the island. Now that we’ve bonded, I’ll have all the combined power I need to save my people.”

Her brain floundered. Gwilym said she couldn’t leave the island. She had duties to perform here. What might happen to her if they found a way to leave? Would she die? Would Ryan die? What about the people destined for the island?

“All I need is your magic inside me completely. Your body and soul bound to mine.” A startling vision of Ryan making love to her swamped her mind and receded as quickly.

Damned confused hell! Ryan could have easily uttered those words. Tears slipped down her cheeks. “Ryan,” she cried, “you don’t know what you’re saying.”

He slicked his tongue up her torso, between her breasts. Freezing pockets of air followed the wet trail. She writhed in her shackles, the invisible straps biting into her skin.

“Are you so sure?” A slithery tongue flicked over her lips. “Nothing has changed since you arrived on the island. I want you to help me return home. I need your help to capture WindWraith.” His lips grazed her ear. “Together we can rule the world.” Exaltation fringed his smirking voice.

“No!” Morgan shouted.

The dead ebony cavern trapped the sound. A vision of WindWraith devouring the body of a vaguely familiar man filled her head. The last thing she saw was the man’s skull and bones heaped in a corner of a red molten cavern.

Chapter 25

Braced between Ryan’s thighs and held firmly to his chest, Morgan felt her body rocking slowly. Her eyelids fluttered open and she gazed into his chalky, scared face. A thunderbolt of memory struck her. Repulsed, she wrestled from his hold and scampered across the pebbly ground out of arm’s reach.

“Whoa, Morgan. What’s wrong?” Ryan leaped up in a defensive stance.

Morgan situated the hot spring between them. She tapped into her magic, readied it.

Ryan scanned the cavern and gave her a puzzled look. Relief flowed across his shoulders, down his arms. “Are you okay? Your eyeballs rolled up into your head and you passed out.”

Was this Ryan? Had WindWraith consumed him? Had her vision already happened, or was it her Sight? It seemed real, unlike her other prophesies. She wrangled with the conflicting chaos. A thudding in her forehead added to the fray, and Ryan stared at her as if she’d sprouted thorns and flowers in her hair.

Stalling to form an answer, acutely conscious of her nakedness, Morgan retrieved her discarded shift and slipped it over her head. She gathered her damp hair and weaved it into a knot at her neck.

Crystal light glistened on Ryan’s naked body in rioting dots of colors. Her palms grew moist and she averted her head, avoiding his nakedness. He was too distracting when she needed to wrap her mind around the vision.

He advanced toward her, his emotions masked in his level stare. “What happened?”

Their link had dissolved, leaving a hollowness in her middle. Either Ryan shielded himself or WindWraith had found a way to possess him.
Holy Goddess on high.