Stone Cold Lover (21 page)

By the Light, he needed to know what was wrong with her. One moment, she had been working quietly on her computer, and the next she had picked a fight with him over nothing, something they had discussed and agreed on well before today. She knew that anytime she left her home, she tempted the Order to launch another attack on her. Spar knew she hated being trapped indoors, but they had agreed that when her restlessness grew too much, either he would take her to her studio, or after dark he would take her for a short flight above the city. They had made a deal, and until this afternoon Fil had expressed no dissatisfaction with the arrangement.

He had no idea what could have set her off, but if this Wynn woman could take one look and attribute this fit to the demon’s mark, he knew the matter had turned grave. He had hoped that with days passing free of further visions, the danger of the mark had passed, or at least had grown no stronger. Now he very much feared the opposite.

Felicity continued to fight him, but her strength, even fueled by her raging madness, could not compare to his. He worried not about her escaping his hold, but about her hurting herself, or about him unintentionally injuring her in his struggle to keep her pinned.

When the woman called Wynn reappeared at the top of the stairs, Spar had Felicity trapped against the sofa with his own body. He held her wrists above her head in one of his hands; one of his legs pinned hers at the knee. With her relatively secured, he took his first good look at the stranger.

She stood somewhere around average height for a human female, perhaps five inches or so above five feet, taller than his Felicity. Her medium-brown hair hung in subtle waves down her back nearly to her waist, and her large brown eyes reminded him of a doe’s, deep and soft and very round. At the moment, they carried an expression of worry, one that tightened her pretty features into pinched lines.

Her figure appeared well rounded at the breast and hips, but surprisingly compact elsewhere. Her baggy, wide-bottomed jeans and loose-fitting, printed top did their best to camouflage it, but a male, even a mated one, would be hard-pressed not to notice. He could also see that despite the cool weather, she wore nothing but a pair of thin sandals on her feet, and her toenails had been painted a glittering purple.

It wasn’t her appearance that gave her away, though. It was the canvas sack she placed on the coffee table, and the items she began to remove. He recognized a tiny metal cauldron and the charcoal disk she wedged inside as an incense burner and could tell from the scents of several small cloth bags that they contained herbs and resins that could be burned, or perhaps even used for other purposes. As she continued to line things up atop the wooden surface, he grunted.

“You are the witch.”

“Nothing gets past you, does it?” She didn’t bother to look at him, just calmly continued her preparations. “I guess that’s why they made you a Guardian.”

Spar’s shock briefly loosened his grip, and Felicity managed to tear one hand free to swing wildly at his face. He felt her nails scratch his skin and immediately resecured her, tightening his grip a fraction.

“What did you call me?” he demanded.

The woman rolled her eyes. “I don’t need to see you covered in granite to recognize you for what you are, Guardian. My full name is Wynn Myfanwy Llewellyn Powe, and for seven generations the men in my mother’s family have served the Light as members of the Guild of Wardens.”

Spar shook with the need to grab the woman and shake her. Did she not realize the importance of what she had just told him?

“Who among your family currently serves?” he demanded, leaning toward her with a growl. “I must contact him immediately. We need to—”

“Hey, right now we need to deal with this.” Wynn pointed at Felicity, still writhing on the sofa. “Do you mind postponing the discussion of my curriculum vitae until we get Felicity out of danger?”

Shame flooded him, and Spar shifted under the unfamiliar emotion. “Of course. Felicity must be treated.”

“Glad we agree.” Wynn twisted to move around Spar’s grip on his mate, laying the back of her hand against Felicity’s forehead. She frowned when she felt the heat of the other woman’s skin. “How long has she borne the mark?”

“More than a sennight. It struck her late on Friday night this week past.”

“I love how you guys sound more and more medieval the more worked up you get.”

He watched her reach for something on the table. “She seemed to suffer no ill effects before this. At least, nothing that affected her behavior. She did have a vision last weekend, and afterward the mark appeared to darken on her skin.”

Wynn shook her head. “I am really sorry I didn’t come sooner. When Tim called me and told me he knew a woman who needed a curse removed, I thought he meant someone who got a rash on her hand and didn’t want to wait for an appointment with a dermatologist. I made a poor assumption, and I’m going to have to live with that for a while. If I’d contacted you right away, this would have been a lot easier. And a lot less dangerous.”

Spar did not like the sound of that. “What will you do? You can remove the mark, can you not?”

“I wish. Unfortunately, it’s taken root too deeply. I won’t be able to remove it completely, but I’m going to sever the connection to its source.”

“The source is dead. The
nocturnis
who cast the spell was murdered by one of his own. That is what Felicity saw in her vision.”

“Wrong. If the source were a single person, this would be no big deal. Bippity-boppity-boop, I wave my magic wand, mark disappears, and we all go home happy for a nice smoked meat sandwich.” She handed him a bundle of red silk cords. “This is a lot more complicated than that. This mark is tied not to the caster, but to the Defiler himself. Cutting the bond will not be quick or easy. You need to bind her.”

Appalled, Spar refused. “I will not. I can hold her as I am doing now. I will not tie her up and leave her feeling abandoned, like some sort of prisoner. You will start without those.” He threw the ropes onto the coffee table.

Wynn picked them up and handed them back. “You can’t hold her for this. One, I wasn’t kidding when I said it wouldn’t be quick; we could be here for hours. And two, I need to be able to get to her without you getting in the way. You take up too much space where I need to maneuver.”

He glared at her, using his most intimidating Guardian expression. She simply watched him and waited, hand out, red cords dripping from the sides of her palm. Muttering something foul in a dead language, he snatched the cords from her and began to wrap them around his mate’s slender wrists.

“Actually, my mother is entirely human, so the livestock reference is way off.”

Of course, the witch spoke Aramaic. Why hadn’t he simply assumed?

It took longer to bind Felicity than it should have, and very little of that had to do with Spar’s reluctance. She fought him like a wildcat, throwing herself against his grip every time he shifted, continually looking for a weakness that would allow her to escape. When he finally had her subdued with rope around her wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles, Wynn handed him additional cords, longer ones this time.

“This sofa has exposed legs. Tie her hands to one end and her feet to the other.”

Spar’s fists clenched until he feared they would shatter. “Is this really necessary?”

“It’s for her safety, Guardian. This won’t be a pleasant experience for any of us.”

Silent, fuming, and aching, Spar did as she instructed. When Felicity had been fully secured, Wynn reached out and touched his arm.

“I know you want to—need to—be close to her, but I can’t let you get in the way,” she said, her expression grave. When he opened his mouth to protest, one corner of her mouth curved slightly upward. “If you walk around and stand at the back of the sofa, she’ll be within arm’s reach, but you won’t be any more in the way than the furniture itself. Okay?”

He felt a rush of gratitude as he moved into position. Gazing down at his mate, he saw the way her chest rose and fell as she panted from her long exertions. Her skin gleamed with sweat, and her clothing had been torn and rumpled during their struggles. Her shirt bore several holes where buttons had been, and beneath the fabric her skin was mottled a sickly grayish color. His eyes flew back to her face, and he could see the odd color beginning to seep down from her hairline.

Wynn followed his gaze, and her jaw tightened. “Okay, let’s get started.”

What followed were the longest six hours of Spar’s inhumanly long life. He lost track of the incenses Wynn burned and the incantations she chanted. Crystals and stones and herbs and runes all passed in front of his watchful eyes. At times she laid her hand on his mate’s head or body, and at times she seemed to forget Felicity was even there as she seemingly slipped in and out of a trance-like state. What he would always remember, though, was the long strip of muslin that she anointed with several different oils before wrapping it nine times around the hand that bore the demon’s mark. Spar would remember because he’d had to pry Felicity’s fingers from their clenched fist and hold them while Wynn worked, and because his mate had screamed in agony during the entire winding process.

At times over the course of the afternoon and into the evening, Spar wondered that no one reported the cries to the human authorities. Had he heard them from the street and not realized what was happening above the empty storefront, he would have suspected torture at the very least, if not outright murder. Of course, he doubted many murder victims took six hours to die.

It took that long for Wynn to do her work. Watching Felicity during that time filled him with a kind of agony he had never experienced before. The fact that she continued to fight her bindings and writhe and struggle during the entire experience proved the forces at play to be inhuman. Not even the pure energy of magic could have fueled that kind of persistence for so many hours.

The tenuous trust he had in Wynn wavered for a moment when she reached to the table at the start of the seventh hour and picked up a double-edged knife. His hand shot out over the back of the sofa and grabbed her wrist.

“What are you doing?”

“Relax, Guardian. I’m not foolish enough to harm another human in your presence.” She turned the knife in her hand, kissed the blade, and then offered him the hilt. “Take it.”

Spar recognized the ritual blade. The athame wasn’t large—only nine inches from end to end—but it gleamed wickedly sharp in the lights of the living room. The hilt had been fashioned from ebony wood turned to curve gracefully in the palm. It flowed uninterrupted to the blade with no pommel or guard to break the line between wood and metal. Despite having sat untouched on the table for hours, it felt warm in his hand.

“You won’t let me harm her, so you’re going to have to do it.”

Spar’s head snapped up, and he felt his fangs emerge even in his human guise. “What?”

Wynn watched him steadily, outwardly unafraid of his show of aggression. “I’ve weakened the bond, but to sever it, the poison it’s infected her with has to be drained. We need to cut her hand and let the cloth soak it up.” She saw the expression on his face, and her mouth curved. “Just a prick, Guardian. I promise she’ll suffer no lasting harm.”

Spar still didn’t like the idea, something he felt certain the witch had no trouble seeing in his face and his reluctant movements. He turned to Felicity and saw to his surprise that her movements had slowed, growing less aggressive in the last several minutes. She continued to pant more like an animal than a human, but she no longer bucked and thrashed against her bonds. He felt a renewed sense of optimism that the witch might actually know what she was doing.

“You need to use the tip of the blade and prick her through the cloth right in the center of the mark. Don’t disturb the wrapping otherwise. It needs to stay in place,” Wynn instructed as she hovered on Felicity’s other side. “The binding around the hand needs to soak up the blood. After you prick her, hand me back the athame.”

He nodded that he understood her instructions, much as he was loath to carry them out. The idea of deliberately causing his mate injury went against the very fabric of his nature. If it would save her, though, he would do whatever he needed to. Taking her bound hand in one of his, he gently pried the fingers open and cradled the palm in one of his own.

With a deep breath, he pulled back and struck before he could think. If he allowed himself to hesitate, he questioned his ability to follow through. The wickedly honed blade sliced through the muslin as if it were tissue paper, and he felt the tip bite into Felicity’s tender flesh. Her high, wild scream nearly caused him to drop the knife.

Color bloomed in the center of the binding, not bloodred but black as pitch. Wynn glanced at it and nodded. “Good.”

Reluctantly, Spar passed back the blade. “What now?”

“Give it a minute.”

Spar waited, eyes riveted to the spot where the black substance continued to stain the white cloth. Near Felicity’s head, Wynn closed her eyes and began to chant. The words were lost on him, but he recognized the lilting, shifting syllables as Welsh. As she spoke her spell, the stain on Felicity’s bandage spread until the very edges began to turn not black, but bright, bloody red.

Wynn’s eyes snapped open and she reached forward, slipping the blade of the knife between Felicity’s skin and the soaked cloth. She sliced easily through the muslin and drew it away, handling it reluctantly by the very edges. Using the athame to shift and poke at it, she stuffed it into a black silk bag she held at the ready and tied it shut with a thin, black cord.

Immediately Spar’s gaze shifted to his mate. He felt his heart stutter as he saw the clear, fair color of her skin and the calm, peaceful expression on her face. She had fallen perfectly still, her body relaxed against the ropes that bound her, no longer fighting to escape. He reached out and cupped her face in his hand, feeling her skin smooth, cool, and soft against his.

After a moment, she stirred, her lashes fluttering briefly before parting to reveal sleepy and confused green eyes. “Hm, wow,” she murmured, her voice husky. Not from sleep, but from six hours of shrieking, screaming, and moaning. “That was one hell of a nap. How long was I asleep?”