Spell Bound (Darkly Enchanted) (11 page)

He did it perfectly, sliding his palms then his fingertips from the lip of the bowl until he was no longer touching. As if he’d been casting for years. He probably had been. Her mom had started her training when she was four.

The bowl continued to rattle.

Shit. This is gonna hurt no matter what—

Sharp pain sliced into her temples right before the power blew her across the room. Pain shot up her spine as her back hit the wall, milliseconds before her head connected.

Yeah, that was going to leave a mark.

“Sissy!” Leo scrambled across the floor after her, eyes wide.

She held up her hands. “I’m okay, bud. I’m fine.” Except…scorch marks covered her hands, making pain shoot up her arms and into her head. Her palms felt like she’d dragged them through a bed of red-hot coals. She dredged up a smile. “You and me together, kinda like Mentos and Diet Pepsi, huh?”

Leo never looked away from her hands, teeth latched into his bottom lip as his dark head tilted to the side. Before she could react, he placed his small hands over her burns. She drew in a sharp breath, steeling herself against the pain—that never came. Instead, she felt heat, not burning red heat but cool white—

Shit. “No, Leo, don’t—”

He wrapped his hands around hers, holding on so she couldn’t get away without possibly hurting him, his grip was that tight.

And then she felt the tingle of Leo’s
arus
working against her own. The relief was immediate as her burns disappeared. Fear rose close on its heels.

Great Goddess, please let him be okay. “Leo, let me see your hands.”

She braced herself for the sight of burns on his small hands. With empathic healing, you took the injury on yourself—

No burns. His hands were perfectly soft and smooth.

She took a deep breath. Only six and he healed with no side-effects.

Such a special little boy.

“Leo.” She looked straight into his eyes. “How long have you been able to do that?”

She couldn’t heal without retaining some of the original injury on herself for a certain period of time, depending on the severity.

He just stared at here, as if he didn’t know the answer to her question. Or he just didn’t want to answer.

With a sigh, she gathered him onto her lap and held him, until she remembered the spell they’d been trying to work.

Looking down, she saw the bloodstone at the bottom of the moon bowl. It looked like a charred piece of wood. Her chest contracted like someone had punched her.

So much for that. Failed again.

Why her mother had ever thought she was special was beyond her.

Leo followed her gaze, little shoulders drooping as he caught a glimpse of the stone.

“It’s okay, bud.” She hugged him tight. “We’ll be okay without it.”

But she swore she felt those damn frogs biting her ass.

* * *

They left the building at seven.

Gabriel had to hand it to the girl. She’d hidden them well. She’d only screwed up once. But once was all it took.

He’d called in a favor with the local police and ran down her license plate. The registered name and address were bogus but she’d gotten a parking ticket two months ago on this block.

He’d been staked out since early afternoon and it’d finally paid off.

Her apartment was in an older building in center city. It had character but wasn’t rundown. Her neighbors appeared to be young and single, coming and going at all hours. Probably never even realized there was a kid living there.

He was pretty sure no one saw her or the boy leave the building. In her baggy jeans, grey sweatshirt and red ball cap with her hair tucked under, she looked like every other city kid with a backpack slung over her shoulder. The boy walked at her side, dressed exactly the same, though his hat and sweatshirt were blue.

From a few blocks behind, his enhanced sight allowed him to track them in the fast-falling dusk. He was careful, but obviously not careful enough.

She realized she had a tail after five minutes. She didn’t stop or look around, but she stiffened and her feet faltered for two steps. Then she continued on as if nothing had happened. It wrung a reluctant grin out of him.

He followed them easily for five blocks. Then they turned down an alley off Chestnut Street. And vanished.

“Fuck.”

“Sure, buddy, but it’ll cost ya.”

A glassy-eyed teen stood on the corner. Gabriel would have ignored him but his dad’s ingrained habits kicked in. He pulled a couple bills from his pocket and shoved them at the boy.

“Eat.” With a small spell, he planted a mental picture of the Chinese restaurant up the street in the kid’s head. “No drugs.”

Staring at the two twenties in his hand, the kid nodded.

“Yeah. Sure.”

Gabriel didn’t wait to see if the kid obeyed. He ran into the alley, searching the dark shadows and hidden spaces for any trace of the girl and the kid. And found nothing.

Well, hell. It’d been a damn long time since anyone had gotten the better of him. That it was a girl… Hell. That just made it worse.

When the alley dumped him onto Spruce, he stopped, eyes narrowed.

Where the hell was she headed?

She wasn’t dressed like a waitress but there were a few restaurants in the area. There were also a couple of funeral homes, one manufacturing operation, a few bars, a few—

Shit.
Shit.
He knew why she’d looked familiar.

She was one of Harry’s girls.

* * *

Like much of the rest of the city, The Spyder had seen better days.

Once the lodge of some benevolent order of animal, the building retained its original stone façade, but the grand arched windows had been boarded over and painted black. Only the decorative wrought-iron grills remained. The front door was arched, as well, and wouldn’t have looked out of place on an English castle—thick-planked and iron-studded.

Only the Etruscans knew the oak door and iron studs were natural spell repellants.

A bas-relief border of trees and deer and rabbits cut the building between the second and third floors. If you looked closely enough, you could see the toothy creatures that lurked behind those trees.

After returning to the girl’s apartment to retrieve his Audi, Gabriel parked the car close to the alley at the back of the building then walked to the front door.

“Dan, how’s it going?”

“Hey, Gabe. How’s it hangin’?” Shaved head gleaming, ebony skin shining in the dusk, Dan Ferryman gave him the once-over before letting his gaze slide back to the street. “Not planning on using any of that hardware tonight, are you?”

“Not unless I need to.”

Dan’s normally grim face split in a toothy grin, showing the elongated incisors that marked him hereditary
versipellis
. Harry employed mostly skin-shifters, from bouncers to bartenders to dancers. With their superhuman strength, they gave him an edge on any
eteri
who might want to pick a fight. “That’s what I like about you, Gabe. You know how to sling the shit. You wanna talk to Harry?”

“Just here for the show.”

Dan’s snort could be heard through the thick door.

Pausing in the hall, Gabriel gave his olfactory sense time to adjust to the smell. How the hell the
lucani
dealt with it, he’d never understand. Their sense of smell was a hundred times better than his and his was three times better than a regular human’s. The amount of alcohol, cigarettes and sex in the air could be a lethal combination.

Shaking his head, he stepped into the main room.

At one time, the club’s public space had been a grand meeting hall with high ceilings, stained glass windows and rich wood paneling fit for an English manor.

But years of hard living had decayed the interior until it resembled a whore who’d stood on her corner too long.

Paint peeled from the paneling in rainbow flakes. Faded red velvet curtains covered the gaping holes where the windows had been, dust clinging to the folds like lint in a fat man’s gut.

Heading for the bar on the left wall, he avoided the tables on the floor and the dozen or so men who watched three dancers gyrating on the catwalk. None was the girl he was looking for.

He took a deep breath of stale air thick with smoke from substances legal and others not so much.

“Gabe.” Harry set a shot of tequila in front of him, slim white hands working fast, pale gray eyes never wavering.

Gabriel downed the alcohol before saying, “I need one of your girls.”

Harry’s bland features tightened infinitesimally. “Nothing kinky and no marks. A C-note for the first fifteen minutes. Which one?”

Gabriel let his gaze roam the murky room. “I’ll let you know.”

He tossed a twenty on the bar for the drink and the info and moved to the table farthest from the stage. After a few minutes of lazy pole-dancing, the three strippers left, and the girl he’d followed appeared.

Holy shit.

Dressed in black leather shorts made for a five-year-old and a couple strips of red leather that barely covered her nipples, she slinked onstage to some music he didn’t recognize. The heavy bass thudded low in his gut and lust grabbed him by the balls as she rubbed her body against the silver pole in the middle of the stage.

Heat drenched him as she tossed her thick mane of hair over her shoulders and bent backward until it swept the floor. Breasts straining against the straps, she rubbed her crotch against the pole then swung around it.

And then she began dancing in earnest.