She thought for sure that it would be Raven who reacted first to her lie, but it was Hawk. One eyelid fluttered up and down, almost like he was having a stroke. The other eye was glassy and staring at some far off place in the distance where baby sisters didn’t say words like “laid” and much less knew what they meant. Middy wondered what he was going to do the first time he heard “fuck” come out of her mouth.
Hawk grabbed at his chest and she heard his breath catch in his throat as he fell over. It was like knocking down a redwood. If not for the fact that he obliterated her chaise longue with his body mass, she would have thought he was being a drama queen. But no, he lay there in a stupor with bits of longue and splintered wood splayed out behind him like a collage.
She giggled.
Raven and Falcon looked like two horrified maiden aunts.
“Oh, yes, my darling brothers. The pasty is on the other . . .”
Raven clamped a hand over her mouth. “We get it. Really, we do.” He was pleading with her now.
Falcon snatched Raven’s hand away just as she was considering whether to bite or not to bite. He must have seen something in her eyes. They backed away from her slowly, dragging Hawk with them.
“Remember to call Mom and tell her when Dred can make it to dinner,” Falcon added before shoving them all through the door behind him.
Yes, indeed. If one were to ask Falcon, Hawk, or Raven, this was the worst thing that could have happened.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dark Alley Assignation
Acertain chancellor pulled the musty velvet of his father’s cloak over his head and ducked into the Banshee’s Bawl—a bar on the warlockian side of St. Louis. He nodded his head to the familiar bartender and palmed the key for his regular room above the bar.
His round cheeks were numb from the chill in the air, but it was nothing compared to the icy feeling that slid down his spine. He was in a world of shit and didn’t see a viable way out. He huffed and puffed like the horny were-wolf from Little Red Riding Hooker as he navigated the twisted and curved staircase.
The cloak gave him a sense of security, a sense of invin-cibility. The tighter he pulled the cloak, the stronger he felt, and the more he believed this plan would work.
It was about time that someone knocked those pompous warlocks off their pedestals. He’d thought for sure that the Gargoyle War would have done it. If the warlocks had lost, they’d have been slaves to the gargoyles, forced to serve just as he had all those hundreds of years ago. Born half-jinn, he’d been hunted when the council had seen what he was capable of. They’d chained his magick, bound his power to serve only their will, and when he’d rebelled and killed his jailers, they’d sentenced him to an eternity in Chaldonean Hall.
As if he ever would have let that stop him. He stifled a laugh. He’d sold his soul for his freedom. They’d all pay for their ancestors’ crimes against him. He’d crush this world under his boot until every witch and warlock knew what it was to suffer as he had suffered.
His masterpiece had almost been within his grasp. Oh, how he’d schemed and plotted. A casual word here, an implication there, and the world had erupted into a bloody dream. The Gargoyle War had been a delectable manifesta-tion of his talent.
Then, in a single moment, Shale Creek had ruined him.
A single act of selflessness had thwarted years of political cock-sucking and maneuvering. It had been no easy feat to push the council into war. The absolute destruction of the mixed gargoyle/warlock community of Shale Creek should have been the boiling point. Each side would blame the other and they’d both pull out everything in their armories.
And out of the destruction would have emerged a new world order, one where he ruled over the mortal world and magick alike. Instead, someone had been willing to die to deactivate all that black magick.
Now, he just had to figure out which one of those fuck-bags had done it, which one of those pretty boy media whores had screwed him over. Shadowins or Belledare?
It was a conundrum, really. Shadowins was a shiny prick, but he’d trafficked in dark and cursed objects. He had the knowledge and the magick to defeat a Hand of Glory—the most powerful of all cursed objects—a candle made from the hands of six hanged warlocks who’d all murdered for their dark power. But Belledare was the war hero. It was he who’d come crowing from the shadows and the ash about saving lives.
And it was he who’d whispered in the dark about the Butcher of Shale Creek—that Dred Shadowins had killed hundreds for that Hand of Glory.
Given Shadowins’s reputation, perhaps he had. But no one had accused him before the high court. This was what made him pause in his assignment of blame. Why hadn’t Shadowins been tried as a war criminal like so many others? Had he performed some secret and heroic duty for the Warlock Council? Why else wasn’t he rotting inside a painting in Chaldonean Hall?
If he wasn’t careful, that’s where his own hide was going to end up. Cursed to serve out his sentence under glass watching the world go by while spectators came to stare at him in his magickal cage.
Never again.
He didn’t have another soul to trade, so if he were to be caught again, he was beyond fucked. It gave him a perverse pleasure to hand down sentences to Chaldonean Hall. It gave him even more enjoyment to carry them out, to walk amongst the damned knowing that his own prison hung empty.
Perhaps he’d just kill Shadowins
and
Belledare.
He couldn’t do it outright though, no. He was so much smarter than either of them—so much apart from the rest of the warlockian world that he knew he was meant to be their god. And like a god, he would destroy where and as he wished.
He wanted to see just what it would take for Shadowins to kill the hero. Or perhaps it would be more interesting if he could coerce the hero into a wanton act of murder?
The key was Midnight Cherrywood, virginal witch and universal good girl. There was magick in her blood, magick older, stronger, and more pure than what had been seen in centuries. The echo of it reverberated through him any time she was within ten feet of him. It stung him like a thousand killer bees, but he coveted it just the same.
His cock was hard at the thought of corrupting her.
He was brought back to the world by the graze of sharp teeth on his neck and the touch of cold, reptilian skin.
Those teeth lingered on the meat of his shoulder where the tendons stood corded and ready for her assault. This was what he was here for, after all.
The creature slithered around him like a python, but then released her hold only to kneel in front of him and push the heavy cloak up to his thighs so her eager fingers could find the small cock hiding beneath his milky paunch.
Her lips closed around the wormlike appendage and suckled. He wanted to grab her hair, but he didn’t dare. Already, the mouth full of teeth grazed the tip of his cock, already he was flirting with death just by allowing her this.
He was confident she wouldn’t actually consume him; a lamia could only take nourishment from innocent flesh, preying mostly on women and children. And he was soured and bitter; his flesh would taste like the dark.
It was his semen that she was after. All of the unformed possibility of life was what kept her in the body she’d stolen.
She looked up into his eyes, and her mouth split in a wide razor as she smiled. Her tongue curled around his member and pulled it deep into her throat.
When he came, he was thinking of the scalding purity that burned inside of Middy Cherrywood like it did no other, that light that made her the only weapon of any use against his lamia. He was thinking of what it would be like to snuff the brightest light that the warlockian world had seen in an age.
He gave no thought to the body of the witch the creature retreated into when she was done.
CHAPTER NINE
An Invitation to the Castle
Midnight Cherrywood looked at her spelltop. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to check her magickal mail or not. Not since the Dred Debacle had exploded across mortal and magickal media alike.
Suddenly, shy little Middy was the center of attention.
Suddenly, she was Someone and everyone wanted a piece of her. She’d had to shut off the m-mail alerts to her Witchberry because the damn thing had been spasming like an epileptic under a disco ball at a rave. Middy knew she’d have to respond sooner or later. After all, she was a society witch now. She had more social obligations than just the foundation and the Masque.
Oh, what this could do for the Masque!
Perhaps she could build support for the orphanage idea that she’d been cramming up Vargill’s rump every time she got him to sit still. She could use some of these reporters to her advantage. . . . Middy found a new tenacity.
She was empowered.
She was going to network.
She was going to use her social connections to save the world.
Resolved, Middy powered up her spelltop with an incantation and connected to the Warlockian World Web.
Middy settled in to answer the four hundred m-mails that she’d received. The first few were gingerbread, a lot like mortal spam, and so she deleted them right off. She had to get a new gingerbread filter now that she wasn’t actually going to open them all.
Then she saw one that almost made her pee her pants.
Her whole body went numb with shock, so she might well have christened the chair. She’d have to check later.
It was from Barista Snow.
She was so thankful that she’d had the foresight to put down her morning cup of cinnamon tea. Middy would have sprayed it out of her nose all over the shiny screen of her spelltop. Barista Snow was the wife of Chancellor Roderick Snow and she was to the Warlockian world what Al-mack’s had been to the
Ton
. Witches did not run in the upper circles of magickal society without her expressed approval.
The m-mail was on a beautiful animated background. It filled the whole room with the likeness of falling snow. The scene was so real that Middy could feel it on the tip of her nose. Each flake was fat and thick, like frozen lace.
It was an invitation to a house party at Snow Manor for the coming weekend!
Her head almost fell off when she realized that she didn’t have Dred’s Witchberry number. Merlin’s Hemorrhoids!
What was she going to do? She had to get in touch with him. What if he had plans this weekend?
Oh, his plans could go hang. This was a pass to Olympus by way of Snow Manor. Hell, Snow Manor was better than Olympus. It was a large, crystalline castle that sat nestled in the Swiss Alps. Invisible to mortal eyes, it had been a strong hold of magick for centuries, but it looked like something right out of a fairy tale.
A castle fit for a princess. Or Barista Snow.
That witch used the ice theme in everything she did, but somehow, anything that bore her stamp was perfect.
She also had the best anti-aging charms. She was a witch of one hundred and twenty, but looked no more than a mortal thirty. Most witches who lived that long looked at least forty-five.
Bitch.
Goddess.
For Middy, it would be the chance of a lifetime just to see the inside of the manor. Let alone stay there for the weekend and be entertained by the legend herself.
She’d need a new wardrobe! Middy was an unusual witch in that she hated shopping. Hated it with a singular burning like she did cramps. Not to mention she was just balls at shopping.
Midnight Cherrywood had been born without the shopping gene. Every nice piece of clothing she owned either her mother or Tally had picked out for her. She could put it together after it was in her closet; it was just choosing things in the store that was the problem. Then there was the issue of fabrics. Warlockian fabrics always had the best wrinkle release, but most were dry charming only.
If Middy hated anything more than shopping, it was dry charming.
It was then, as her mind wound the myriad tendrils of her thoughts into a noose, that Middy realized she’d promptly spazzed right the fuck out.
“Fuck,” she whispered out loud. “Fuck!” It tasted good on her tongue. The word just rolled off like melted butter.
Of course, that really wasn’t the imagery she wanted. In fact, it grossed her out. But damn was it ever fun to say.
“Fuck!”
She was still a few monkeys short of a barrel of fun, but she was feeling much more in control of herself after a few “fucks.” Middy giggled. She’d been told it only took one—fuck that is—to feel better.
“What the hell are you giggling about, sitting here in the dark all by yourself?” Tally asked her as she flipped on the light and strolled into the room looking sated and full.
“Nothing,” Middy sighed. “I’m just losing my mind.”
“Dred?”
“Barista Snow.”
“What did the witch do now?” Tally refilled the wobbly teacup in Middy’s hand and lounged beside her.
“She invited me to a house party this weekend.”
“You’re shitting me blue. Seriously?” Tally perked up.
“Duties of the wealthy affianced.” Middy shrugged her shoulders.
“Shopping!” Tally cried and was on her feet.
“Uh, no. How about you shop and I will stay here?”
Middy flashed her roomie a pleading look, but the effort was wasted. Her friend would have done it anyway.
“I want to go! I would die to see the inside of Snow Manor. I wonder if all the chancellors have been invited?
Maybe I should ask Martin? What if he’s not going? Or what if he’s going and he doesn’t want to take me?” Tally frowned and then suddenly put her hand on her stomach and grimaced.
“Tally, what’s wrong?” Middy watched, unsure of how to help her friend as she watched her face contort.
“Oh, nothing. I’ll be okay. No worries. It’s a new cleanse tea I tried. It’s giving me the most horrible gut pains.”
“Maybe you should lie down.”
“And miss out on shopping? You’re going to Snow Manor and I won’t have you wearing whatever horrors are currently hanging in your closet.” Tally managed a real smile.