Blood of Destiny (Witch Fairy #6) (9 page)

I shake my head and sigh.  “No, I don’t believe you’ve mentioned it.”

With a playful growl, he captures my lips and kisses me breathless.  When I can finally intake some oxygen, I say, “Okay, you may have mentioned it once or twice.”

“Much better,” he says again, and he adjusts us slightly so he’s on his back and my head is resting on his chest.  He’s making circles on my back with his fingers.  “I love you.”

I grin against his chest.  “I love you, too.”  It doesn’t take long for us to fall sleep despite our sexual frustration.

Chapter 9

All my dreams during the night are about babies.  And all the babies are screamers.  Except one.  He’s a poop machine.  Every time I change his diaper, he poops again.  I can only use one hand to change him, though, because I have to use my foot and other hand to rock the complicated chain of screaming baby cribs attached to a pulley system and it requires the use of both limbs.  It doesn’t make them stop crying, but if I don’t rock them constantly, the babies’ cries become deafening. 

I wake up to Kallen shaking me.  “Xandra, it’s just a dream,” he’s saying.

I force my consciousness to acknowledge him.  He’s real.  These screaming babies aren’t.  Slowly, I wake enough to push my eyes open a little bit.  I try to surreptitiously look around a little bit just to be sure there aren’t any real babies around.

Kallen chuckles, and as if reading my mind, says, “There are no babies here.  It was just a dream.”

I open my eyes fully and let them adjust to the light from the bare bulb overhead.  “How do you know what I was dreaming?”

“You were screaming that the babies had to all shut up so you could concentrate on the poopy one.”  He raises a brow.  “I assume that was because he smelled so horribly?”

I nod.  “It was awful.”  I didn’t even know you could smell things in dreams.  I could definitely smell that baby’s poop, though.

Kallen gives me a stern look.  “If that is how you are going to be with babies, I am going to suggest we do not have any.”

I pull the pillow out from under my head and bop him with it.  “It was just a dream, remember?”

He steals the pillow from me so I can’t bop him again.  “Well, I believe you woke the entire island with your opinions on baby poop.”

I can’t help it.  My cheeks turn red.  “Is Patrick here?  Did he hear me?”

He waits several heartbeats before he nods.  Then he says, “No.”

I try to grab the pillow from him but he holds it tight.  “That wasn’t nice.”

He shrugs and grins.  “I never claimed to be nice.”

Grabbing the front of his t-shirt, I pull him down to me.  He’s wary until I lift my head and meet his lips with mine.  After a quick kiss, I mumble against his lips, “Stop being a jerk.”

He laughs and sits back up.  “Perhaps in a few years.  I am having too much fun to stop now.”

I roll my eyes and sit up, as well.  Through a yawn, I ask, “What time is it?”

“A little after eight.  Patrick should be back soon since the bar opens at nine.  Then we can break the bad news to him that his new help will be deserting him today.”

Aw.  Poor Patrick.  He was so excited to have more time with his lady friend.  It takes some effort again to keep that visual from popping into my head, but I manage.  Barely.  “I feel bad.  But not bad enough to stay a minute longer than we have to.”

Kallen stands up and stretches.  I love it when he does that.  He looks like a sleek cat as all his muscles ripple with the movement.  It makes me want to pull him back down to me again.  No.  Not until we figure out the whole baby thing.  With a groan, I swing my legs over the cot and stand up.  “I’m going to have some stale peanuts for breakfast.”  There’s a big bag of them behind the bar.

“Save some for me,” he says with a wink.  “I’m going to start with the opening stuff Patrick wanted me to do.”

“Kiss me first.”

He grins.  “My pleasure.”  And he does.  And it leaves me wanting so much more.  Stupid hormones.  We force ourselves to pull away before we end up in the same position we were in last night.

Patrick walks in just as we’re about to unlock the door.  Right behind him are the same gentlemen who were at the bar yesterday.  They’ve brought some friends, as well.  Turns out, a young married couple who show up out of the blue is equivalent to a Thanksgiving parade back home.  I think half the island has come to watch us.  The larger audience does not make me pour ale any better, though.  Not to mention I don’t like the looks several of the women are sending Kallen.  I don’t think some of them care if he’s a married man or not.  Technically, he’s not, but they don’t know that.

Considering how busy we are all day, you’d think the time would fly by.  It doesn’t.  Patrick serves breakfast and lunch, so Kallen is stuck in the kitchenette area cooking and I’m running back and forth delivering food on top of pouring drinks. 

Patrick is enjoying himself being on the other side of the bar for a change.  He was bummed when we told him we were leaving, so he decided to live it up on his day off.  By noon, he’s so drunk he has to go home, which is upstairs, and sleep it off.  Most of the crowd thins out after lunch, but there’s still a fair amount of stragglers who come in the rest of the afternoon.  By dinnertime, I’m exhausted.  Kallen looks a little better than I do, but not much.  I can’t wait to see Tabitha’s face when I tell her he spent all day cooking. 

Thinking that makes me homesick.  I start watching the clock even closer which of course makes the time crawl by like an asthmatic snail.  I am so relieved to see Ray come in at 7:45 that I’m tempted to give him a hug.  I don’t.  He’s still a Fallen Angel with a shady past in my opinion.

When the last person is shooed out of the bar, Patrick turns to us.  “Thank ye for givin’ these ol’ bones a wee bit o’ rest.”

I smile.  “You’re welcome.”

“We must be going now,” Kallen says.  He has a hand on my lower back and is gently propelling me towards the door.  Ray is right behind us. 

“Going?  Where?  Are ye sleeping at Ray’s house tonigh’?”

I start to say no but I’m drowned out by Ray.  “Yes, they are.  I’ve arranged for a boat to pick them up first thing in the morning.”  Oh, yeah.  There probably aren’t any boats coming out to the island after dark this time of year.

With a final good bye, we walk out into the bitter cold.  “Where are we going?” I ask, zipping the coat Kallen makes for me up to my chin.  We’ve already told Ray that I can open gateways between the realms.  That’s pretty common knowledge nowadays, so it’s not a big deal that he knows. 

“The Wishing Stone,” Ray says, walking ahead of us.

“What’s that?”

Ray smiles over his shoulder.  “It’s a stone where you can make wishes.”

Does everyone think they’re funny when they say things like that to me?  Well, they’re not.  “Thanks, I figured that part out on my own.”

He chuckles.  “It is a magical stone that will grant wishes.  If you climb up to it, which is quite dangerous, and spin around three times, your wish will come true.”

Huh.  I wonder if you can wish away promises to Angels.  Probably not.  “Is it far?”

“Not too far.” 

Fifteen minutes later, I sound like a kid on a long car trip.  “Are we there yet?”

Ray holds an arm out and points to the distant horizon.  “You see that cliff?  The Wishing Stone is the flat one on top of it.”

I turn to Kallen.  “Hey, that’s where we landed.”  Kallen sighs and shakes his head at me. 

Ray stops walking and turns around.  “What do you mean, that’s where you landed?”

I suck at being secretive.  I’ll give it a final try.  “I meant, that’s where our boat let us off.”  That earns me another head shake from Kallen.

Ray crosses his arms over his chest.  “There is no way a boat would pull up there.”

I sigh.  “Forget it, I was wrong.”  I’ll try deflection.  “Where are we going to do this?” 

Ray looks like he wants to ask me more, but he doesn’t.  “There’s a spot next to the stone that should shield us from anyone seeing.”

As we walk towards the Wishing Stone, a thought hits me.  We were on top of it.  And I spun around three or four times before I wished that I could teleport to the Fallen Angel.  Great.  Now, I don’t know if it was the magic of the stupid Wishing Stone, or the little rock in my pocket that brought us to him.  I sigh.  I guess we’ll find out with the next one.

Another five minutes, and we’re where Ray thinks is safe.  We all take a moment to scan the area until we’re satisfied that no one is around.  Now, I close my eyes and I put my hand out and imagine I am peeling back the page of a huge book.  I hear a slight intake of breath from Ray, so I guess it worked.  I open my eyes and there it is.  A gateway to the Fairy realm.  I put my hand out and I clear the harmful elements from it so it won’t hurt when we step through.  Then, I gesture to Ray to go first.  He looks doubtful, but he goes anyway.  Kallen follows and then me, closing the gateway behind us.

It feels great being out of the biting cold.  The house in front of us is glowing in soft light, and even though I’ve only lived here for a short time, it feels like I’ve come home.

“Xandra Illuminata Smith!  You get your butt in this house right now and you explain why you and Kallen took off without telling anyone.  And if you’re married, I will learn how to become corporeal just so that I can strangle you!”  Yup, feels like home.

Chapter 10

“We’re not married, Mom,” I say as I trudge through the sand to the terrace stairs. 

“Then where have you been?  You had no right to go off like this and make us all worry.  Again.  We thought maybe the Apsaras were back and kidnapped you again.”

Sentences like that sound so normal nowadays.  I’m standing in front of my angry ghost mother, who has now been joined by my angry ghost father.  The way he’s looking at Kallen, I think he’s been plotting his slow death as well if we came back married.  You know, there used to be a time when my family solved its problems without violence.

“Can we come inside and explain?” I ask, trying to make my eyes big and doe like.  I know she can’t resist me when I look like this.  I can already see her angry façade starting to crumble.

She’s not going to go down without a fight, though.  “Not until you tell me who that is?”  She points her translucent arm towards Ray. 

Yeah, kind of forgot about him when the familial death threats started.  “Um, he’s a Fallen Angel.  He’s going to stay with us for a little bit.”

“You certainly do take a lot for granted,” a cool voice says from the doorway.  “And you, my grandson, know how much I loathe uninvited company.”

I’m hoping Kallen fields this one.  I turn my doe eyes on him.  I get an annoyed look in response.  But, he turns to Isla and says, “Yes, I am aware of that, Grandmother.  These are extenuating circumstances.  If we do not comply, Xandra will lose her wings.”

“Wings?” Ray says from behind us.  Now it’s Kallen’s turn to look sheepish over letting too much information slip out.  “What do you mean, wings?”

Isla gives him a look that would subdue an attacking tiger.  “You, stay out here.  You two,” she says to me and Kallen, “get in the house, right now.  This better be a damn good story.”  She spins on her heels and storms into the house with Mom.  Dad is apparently on sentry duty, because he stays behind when Kallen and I follow them into the house.  This is going to be fun.

Everyone retreats to the kitchen, our favorite spot for discussing things.  I don’t know why.  It just seems more personal, I guess.  A little too personal at the moment.  Sitting down at the marble topped island counter, I try to figure out where to start. 

Apparently, I don’t need to because Isla turns to Kallen.  “Where have you been?  We have been worried sick.” 

That’s confirmed by Tabitha when she walks behind him and smacks the back of his head.  “You are an ungrateful child making us worry so.”

Kallen rubs the back of his head as he tries to lean out of smacking range.  “I apologize.  We did not mean to leave so suddenly.  We had no choice.  We were sent to the Cowan realm by an Angel artifact.”

Considering our crazy lives, you’d think everyone would go, ‘oh, okay, that explains it.’  But no.  We get blank stares and complete silence as they wait for Kallen to continue.  Okay, some of the stares are more doubtful than blank. 

“It’s true,” I add for good measure.  Too bad there aren’t crickets in the background.  This is the perfect situation for them to fill the void of silence.

“How did you come into possession of an Angel artifact?” Isla finally asks.  Mom seems to be content to let her do the grilling. 

I turn pleading eyes to Kallen, hoping he’ll save me from having to explain again, but he shakes his head slightly.  Traitor.  With a sour look in his direction first, which the back of mind is telling me is undeserved but I’m ignoring it, I turn to Isla and my Mom.  I’m really glad Dad stayed out on the terrace at the moment.

The words pour out of my mouth in an almost unintelligible gush.  “Because of the Apsaras magic Kallen and I had sex because the residue of their magic makes you do things that you really want to do even if you weren’t planning to and I panicked afterwards when I saw our rings glowing which makes me really stupid since I love Kallen so much and I want to be married to him.  So I made a deal with an Angel who just happened to show up after Kallen fell asleep.  He agreed to not record what we did in his history record so it’s like it never happened which is why you guys don’t see our rings glowing.  So now it’s this magically kept secret which I definitely regret agreeing to especially since it made it so that Kallen can’t even remember what we did but I can’t change it back or we’d both be in trouble.  So now he wants me to do favors for him and I can’t tell any of the other Angels because like I said we’d both get in trouble.  So I can’t get out of the deal without losing my wings and who knows what else.”  I clamp my mouth shut as hard I can, but it doesn’t do any good.  I can’t keep the next words back.  “And I might be pregnant.”

Blank is definitely not the word that I would use to describe their faces now.  Not doubtful, either.  I’m pretty sure they believe every word that I just said.  I turn scared eyes to Kallen, who looks just as scared, and he comes behind me, wrapping his arms around me and resting his chin on my head.  I feel like he’s wrapped me in a cocoon of safety and I love him the more for it. 

“We tried to rectify the situation with Dagda, but he refused to marry us,” Kallen explains.  “Then the Angel returned and gave Xandra the artifact.  It almost immediately sent us hurtling to the Cowan realm.”

“Damn right he refused to marry you,” an angry male voice says from the door.  “He has no right to allow my daughter to get married without my permission.”  That shade of red I turned in Ireland?  It was nothing compared to this.  My dad just heard me say I had sex for the first time and that I might be pregnant.  I’d crawl under the counter and never come out if it wasn’t solid underneath.  Kallen drops his arms and moves to my side, only holding my hand now.  I think it’s a show of respect to my dad but I wish he hadn’t moved.

“Jim,” Mom floats to his side and puts a hand on his shoulder. 

Dad reacts the same way I do when Kallen does that to me.  “Julienne, I will not be shushed.  Our daughter is too young to get married!  I may not be able to prevent them from having sex, but I can damn well keep her from making what could be a huge mistake.  She’s met ONE boy.  One.  And she wants to marry him!”

Good thing Dad’s looking at Mom and not Kallen.  I think any affection he once had for my dad is gone.  At least for the moment. 

“I hope I am not intruding,” Ray says from the doorway.

“As a matter of fact, you are.  This is a family matter,” Tabitha says, rising from her stool.  I think if he comes any closer she’s going to smack
him
in the back of the head.

Ray nods his head.  “I understand that.  Unfortunately, the volume of your discussion makes it as easily heard from the terrace as from here.  As I am not familiar with the area, I am leery to stroll about.  Therefore, I thought it best not to continue eavesdropping.”

Tabitha’s about to say something, but Ray speaks first.  “I have had the opportunity to observe this young couple over the last two days, and I have to say, I have rarely seen a love as strong as theirs.  As an Angel, I have had the opportunity to observe many great loves over the ages and all of the characteristics are here.  Love was made to be a tricky business to make true love possible.  Therefore, wrong paths are sometimes taken.  Many believe they have to,” he pauses a heartbeat, “lose at love several times before they know what they truly desire.  That is simply not the case.  The love that these two feel for each other would be the same if they had chosen hundreds of partners before meeting each other.  In each heart, there is room for one true love.  There may be other loves along the way, but the heart knows when it has found the one.  These two young people enjoy each other’s company, they share humor and worry alike, they protect each other, and most importantly, they give to each other a love that is pure.  A love that comes from that part of the heart reserved for true love.  There simply is no room for doubt on the subject.  I have looked at true love, and this is it.”

Wow.  Ray just spiked to the top of my favorite people list at the moment.  Not only has he defended us, he’s managed to steal the voices of everyone present.  Not the way I do it, with magic, but with words.  I sneak a peek at Kallen and he’s looking at Ray in a whole new light as well.

After a moment of complete and utter silence, Tabitha stands up.  “You look like you haven’t had a decent bite to eat in years,” she says to Ray.  “Sit down and I’ll make you some supper.”

With a broad grin, Ray sits down at the counter.  “Thank you, ma’am.  I would appreciate a bite to eat.”  Turning to Isla, he says, “I am afraid that I am in the dark as much as Xandra is regarding my presence being necessary here, but I would love it if you could see it in your heart to allow me to stay.  I will prove myself to be helpful in any number of ways – odd jobs around the house, keeping up your immaculate landscaping, perhaps even building you a coach that truly expresses your power and beauty.”

There is no way that Isla’s going to fall for that dribble.  She’s opening her mouth to speak, and I’m tempted to cover my ears.  I’m afraid of the language she’s probably going to use.  “I am sure that is not necessary, but you are welcome to stay.” 

Now, it’s my mouth hanging open.  I look up at Mom and Dad, expecting them to be fuming over Ray’s interruption, but they’re off in the corner now whispering like crazy to each other.  And I don’t think it’s about how to kill me and Kallen.  They don’t even look mad anymore.

Catching me looking at them, Dad gives me a sad smile.  Taking Mom’s ghost hand in his, he leads her back to the counter.  With a deep breath, he looks at Kallen, not me.  “I was out of line before.  I know that you love my daughter and she loves you.  If it is what you truly want,” he looks at me now, “then you have our permission to marry.”

I’m pretty sure the hinges on my jaw have stopped working.  I don’t think even WD-40 could make them close my mouth again.  They’ve all gone crazy.  Ray is working some weird mojo magic on them and they don’t even feel it.  Even if I haven’t felt him pull any magic since we got back, he has to be.

“Can we get back to the favors I owe this Angel?” I ask, feeling the need to change the subject.  I don’t know why I sound snarky, but I do.  For some reason, I guess I didn’t want them to like Ray, even if he did settle things down.  I still don’t trust him or Ambriel.

Isla’s eyes snap back to me.  “Yes.  Tell us how this artifact works.”

I take the rock out of my pocket with my free hand.  They can call it an artifact all they want, but it’s still just a rock to me.  I set it down on the counter to let them see it.  Isla reaches out to touch it, but Kallen stops her.  “Grandmother, it may only be touched by an Angel.”  Isla pulls her hand back.

“What does it do?” she asks.

I shrug and pick it up again.  “I don’t really know.  All I did when it brought us to Ray was think ‘take me and Kallen to the Angel.’”

I am getting it tattooed on the inside of my eyelids.  That’s all there is to it.  I’m getting it tattooed there so I can see it every time I close my eyes. 
Think about what you are saying before you say it!