Sinful Magic (14 page)

Axel and Phoenix both stared at him, while Roxy lifted her head. “He sensed me in the hotel? Knew Liam was after me?”

Her eyes were filled with wonder. He could see that she was enthralled with the romance of that idea. “It’s the only explanation I can think of.”

“Phoenix?”

They all turned to where Ailish stood in the doorway. Phoenix strode to her, taking her arm and guiding her into the room. “Did you talk to the Ancestors?” he asked her.

“Yes.” Her gaze drifted. “I asked about the Dragon Tear.”

Surprised, Key asked, “What about it?”

Ailish turned toward his voice. “Phoenix wanted to know if there’s any way to destroy it.”

Her mate added, “Liam’s back, the Tear is a god-killer, and I was telling Ailish everything we learned from your drawings through our link. She consulted the Ancestors.” Phoenix looked down at her. “Tell us.”

“The Ancestors said the Tear was formed in ancient dragon magic, very powerful. The only one who can destroy it is a dragon. They said to wake the dragon. It’s our only hope of getting that Tear out of Asmodeus’s reach.”

Key felt Roxy stiffen as the silence settled around them. She didn’t want that, didn’t want her magic. She’d told him he was destroying her. And that was the one thing he couldn’t live with.

Phoenix broke the silence. “Roxy’s your soul mirror. When we seal our bonds with our soul mirrors, the winged creature in us wakes. Your dragon will wake when you do that.”

“There must be another way,” Key said. “I felt Roxy’s magic when she saw the dragon panels. She’s already connecting with Dyfyr—”

“You felt my magic?” Roxy said, her voice tight. She turned to look at the drawings. “It’s already happening. Just like

it’s happening.”

The bewildered distress in her voice cut him. He was so damned sorry. Hadn’t she suffered enough? Yet when her magic surfaced, her skin had lit with sunset colors and she’d been stunning. How could she not want that gift?

“Liam said I had the mark—” Roxy stepped away, and spun to face them; her face bloomed with angry color and her eyes grew wide. “She knew.”

Totally thrown off by that, Key said, “Who knew?” And how the hell had Liam known all this when Key didn’t?

Roxy narrowed her eyes. “My mother. Before

I was on the phone with her in the hotel and she said that I had the only fully formed schema since the curse, and that it was really important, but she wouldn’t tell me why.” She looked up at him. “She didn’t tell me, never warned me.”

Key could see the raw pain in her expression. This is the kind of shit families did to one another. “You’re safe now.” Realizing how inadequate and useless that sounded, he asked, “You think she knew you could wake the dragon? Or about the Tear?”

She straightened. “I’ll find out. She’s not going to play her games now. I will get the full truth from her.”

Axel cleared his throat. “We’ll leave for Glassbreakers tonight. Then we’ll get some sleep and reconvene tomorrow. Phoenix, you drive the four of you and I’ll fly over, keeping watch from the sky.”

Once she and Kieran were alone in the room, Roxy’s mind kept spinning, filling with both wonder and betrayal. She looked up at the picture of Dyfyr holding his beloved. The more she stared, the more she felt the connection. Because she and Key were soul mirrors?

Or something else?

What secrets had her mother hidden from her? She knew her mother was manipulative, and magic-hungry, but how deep did it go? How deep were her mother’s secrets? Her stomach turned. What would the soulmirror witches think of Roxy when they found out who her mother was?

Returning her attention to Dyfyr on the wall, she concentrated and felt a soft pop deep in her pelvis.

Her first chakra. It was happening. She felt trapped, scared, and turned around. Kieran stood there, his legs spread, arms down, and the dragon on his chest holding her lock of hair like a priceless treasure. Looking at them, she didn’t feel trapped any longer. Lifting her gaze to his eyes, she said, “It’s not going to stop.”

“What?”

“My magic. It’s rising, and if I don’t

it won’t stop.” She was trying to come to terms with the decision she had to make.

Key’s face softened. “I can stop it. My blood worked earlier.”

Roxy did a full turn, looking at all his work, then back at him. “And it drove you to do all this. You didn’t drain off the pain, you took it.” He’d done that for her. First he’d saved her life, then suffered for her.

“I knew what I was doing. Drawing eases it. Don’t worry.”

She walked to him and took his chalk-stained hand in hers. “What’s it like?”

“What?”

“To have such an amazing talent.”

His eyes shone. “Being able to draw is like breathing to me. I’ve always done it, and I have to do it. It’s survival. It’s the one thing I can count on.”

Roxy felt the truth in his words. “I envy your gift and passion. Since I don’t have any talent of my own, I love searching out projects to develop for TV or movies.” She shut up before she added that it helped to feed the emptiness inside her, the one that nothing else ever touched. She looked down, seeing her smaller hand stroking his bigger one. And she realized that his touch made that emptiness feel a little less frightening.

Kieran took hold of her chin. “You have the gift of magic. The only problem I see is, you don’t trust yourself or your magic.”

She shivered, wanting desperately to sink into this man. “It’s sex magic. It’s not creating beauty or worlds like you do.”

Rubbing his thumb along her cheek, he said in a low voice, “There’s beauty in sex, green eyes. If you haven’t experienced it, you haven’t been doing it right.”

He made it sound so simple. “But sex magic is just about harnessing the energy to fill our chakras, not sharing intimacy. People get hurt, get angry.”

“People like your father?”

“Yes. But it’s more than that. One night when I was eleven, it was a full moon, and my mom had to leave to do a fertility ceremony.”

His fingers tensed on her face. “She left you alone?”

She nodded. “I finally fell asleep, watching the moon though my window and sort of hating it. The moon always took her away from me to do these ceremonies to bring children to the world.” Pausing, she got herself back on track. “Anyway, I fell asleep and woke when a man’s hand covered my mouth.”

Key’s eyes drained of any blue to icy gray. He slid his hand from her face to put it around her shoulder, pulling her against him, as if he could protect her from her own memories. “What happened?”

Fourteen years ago and it was still vivid. “I tried to scream, but I couldn’t breathe. He was shoving up my nightgown and said, You’re like your mother, aren’t you? I can feel it. Since she’s not here, you’ll do.”

“Shit, Roxy, did he—”

“No. My mother came home and chased him off. He was one of the men she’d slept with, and he came back for more. He was obsessed with her, with her sex magic. Some men fear the power, others are mesmerized by it. I guess he thought if I was her daughter—” She cut herself off. “My father came over, and they had a fight. In the end, my father took me home with him. And from then on, he told me I had to let my chakras die and become mortal in order to have any happiness. And when I did see my mother, she pushed me to find my Awakening and release my magic. It’s always been one or the other. Choose, pick a side. And the mortal side seemed like a better bet.” Because deep down, Roxy forced herself to admit silently that she didn’t trust her mother, or her motives in pushing so hard for Roxy to Awaken her magic.

He brushed her hair back from her eyes. “Sounds like your parents played a game of tug-of-war with you. And maybe shaded the truth to their own liking. Your father made you believe that man in your room had something to do with your magic, didn’t he?”

She frowned at him. “The man said—”

“You were eleven years old! Your magic didn’t attract him, he was a pervert and a rapist. Your father should have found him and killed him. Not blamed you! Not made you feel shame in your gift. And your mother should never have left you alone and vulnerable to a predator.”

Roxy was so startled she couldn’t think of anything to say. His entire body was heating with his anger on her behalf. He made her feel she mattered.

He dragged in a breath and added, “No one is going to pressure you, not while I’m around. I’m here to keep you safe.”

She leaned back, looking up into his eyes. “According to my mother, there’s no stopping my Awakening now. I didn’t want to believe her, but you saw it in the shower, the schema is filling with more and more color. The pain, well, you felt it, and it’s only going to get worse. It’s time I faced the reality. I will never be mortal.” Hearing herself say the words stopped her for a second. But then she pressed on, “And it’s not just about me anymore. You need me to help you wake Dyfyr and find out how to get rid of the Tear. Even I know how important Wing Slayer is in the fight with Asmodeus. I can’t let him be killed by the Tear if I have the power to stop it.” It was time to let go of her impossible dreams, grow up, and deal in reality. Kieran had saved her life. How could she not help him in return? “Can you teach me to, I don’t know, trust my magic?”

His gaze heated, but his voice was gentle. “Hell, yes. I can show you beauty in sex and pleasure.” He took a breath, “That’s the easy part.”

“What’s the hard part?”

His stare grew remote. “We’re soul mirrors, and if we finish this bond, you’re going to need me. We’ll have to be a part of each other’s lives.” Running a hand through his hair, his voice tensed. “Your dream is some romantic love story that I don’t know if I can do. I’m not good at relationships. Look at Dyfyr. He loved a woman, and it caused him so much grief, he cried dangerous tears, then put himself in a sleep. Where you see romance in that, I see misery.”

Her chest grew heavy. She hadn’t even realized she’d had a secret hope that as soul mirrors, she and Key would have a love story, or maybe it was from the drawings of Dyfyr. As soon as she saw them, her magic had bubbled in recognition, and she’d wanted desperately to wake the dragon. Like part of her was missing and

“Romantic Roxy, that’s what my cousin Shayla calls me. But you don’t believe in romance, or love?”

He pulled his mouth tight, then said, “I believe in actions, and taking care of responsibilities. Dyfyr will be your familiar. He’ll help you reach your top chakras, and that should help you with your sex magic. I won’t take Dyfyr away from you, Roxy. You’re giving me freedom from the curse and the Tear. I won’t reject you. Anytime you need me for magic, or sex, I’ll be there for you.”

“I see. So you’ll be my on-call stud service?”

A primitive blue flickered in his eyes. “No, damn it.” He fisted his hand at his side. “I put my passion, my faith into my art. Not people.”

Her heart squeezed. What had happened to him to make him feel that way? “Why?”

He looked down at her, his eyes turbulent. “People destroy each other. I don’t want to destroy you.”

This man who had taken her pain had been trying to save her, not destroy her. He was bringing out her magic, but that wasn’t something he’d set out to do. He’d left that decision to her. And she’d made her choice—there was no going back. “We’ll concentrate on waking the dragon and finding out how to safeguard the Tear.”

Key jolted awake, leaped to his feet with his knife in his hand. Witch blood. He could smell it

Want it.

As he came fully awake, he realized it wasn’t real, but images in his head. His fingers tightened around the silver hilt of his knife. The burn slithered and grew. He looked down at his arm and saw the veins swelling beneath his skin.

Craving witch blood.

Want it. He wanted to feel the warm power pouring over his skin and cooling the burn in his veins. Filling the emptiness. The hollowness that gnawed at him.

Witch blood in your room, sleeping in your bed.

“No,” he said, his voice dry with need. He looked across the length of his loft, toward his bedroom. Roxy was in there, the sound of her soft breathing telling him she was still asleep.

Sex. He could bring out her power with sex, then harvest it with his knife. His mind splattered with images: sex, blood, the patterns her blood would make on his chest when he cut her. The feel

The rancid smell of burning skin jolted him. Then he felt a searing line on the right side of his chest. He looked down and saw a row of burn blisters from the dragon’s snout up to his right shoulder.

Dyfyr was pissed. Showing more signs of life to protect Roxy. His ruby eyes glowed with anger. The pain didn’t do much, but the smell of his flesh burning was enough to mask the lingering scent of witch blood.

But he still felt the urgency, the rage building into cold emptiness that sucked at him, pulled at him, trying to draw his mind into the endless vortex.

Recognizing the signs, Key knew he needed to vent the cold rage. Sex, violence, or drawing, that was how he did it.

Draw. He grabbed the jeans he’d thrown on the floor when he’d gone to sleep on the couch, yanked them on, then strapped on the holster he used for his knife. Securing the weapon, he looked at his bedroom again.

Don’t. Even the faint scent of her dark chocolate power might set him off.

It wasn’t her scent that had woken him. It hadn’t been her scent he’d smelled, so strong, so jacked up with adrenaline

Liam. He’d struck again. Furious, Key began to twitch with the need to draw, to spill out his venomous hatred of his brother. It was just after ten, giving him about five hours’ sleep. He turned his back on the loft and headed for the wide metal stairs going down to the first level where he had his studio.

The walls were brick and the floor cement. He had a large U-shaped work space. His computer faced out, equipped with a graphics tablet and stylus when he wanted to do digital drawings, a scanner for when he wanted to scan in freehand work. He also had a drafting table. And on one large wall he had sheets of paper to allow him to draw at will.

Like now.

He opened a drawer in his desk and got out a fresh supply of pencils. Going to the largest page, he selected a pencil and began to track his brother. He worked fast, not trying to remember the dream or control his art. He didn’t judge, didn’t even look.