9781618851307WitchsBrewShayNC (38 page)

Saylym focused her attention on the monstrosity across the
dim room. Against the far wall stood a gigantic, ancient, rusty valve extending
through the wall behind it. The valve stood upright, perched atop a huge iron
wheel with oversize iron teeth.

Talon
stood beside it, waving the torch back and forth. He twisted and tugged the
valve. It squeaked and groaned in protest, but didn’t budge.

“It’s
rusted tight,” he said needlessly. “Damn.”

Handing
Saylym the torch, he pointed. “Stand over there against that wall. I may have
to use magic to turn the valve and sometimes things explode.”

“Great,”
Saylym muttered. “That’s all I need.”

Talon frowned, placing both hands around the huge valve
and grunting as he tried to turn it. “It’s not going to budge.” A sigh. “All
right. Close your eyes, baby.”

“Why?”

“Because
there are going to be flashes of light, and I don’t want to damage your eyes.”

Saylym closed her eyes and leaned against the wall behind
her.

Her
eyes popped open as she felt him kiss her lips. “Oh, I’ve been
blinded
by the light, all right.”

“For luck,” he whispered against her mouth and nudged her
with his groin. “Don’t pout, even though that bottom lip looks sexy as hell
when you do that delicious little sulky thing you do with it. It makes me
horny. You have no idea of the erotic dreams I’ve had of your mouth doing yummy
things to my cock. But I don’t want to be distracted right now.”

He
didn’t want to be distracted?

Talon
grinned. “You can watch,
La-Scheme.
There will be lights, but they won’t
blind you. I was teasing.”

He
took a single step forward. Stretching out his hands in a theatrical gesture,
he pointed his fingertips toward the rusty valve and wiggled them.

Saylym rolled her eyes. “You’re forgetting to say
hocus-pocus.”

Her jaw dropped as gold sparks flew from his fingertips
and danced around the valve like twitching bolts of electricity. The valve
groaned and then slowly rotated counter clockwise.

“
Hocus…pocus
,” he said slowly, then turned to face
her. He leaned nearer to close her mouth with a fingertip.

Saylym slapped his hand away. “You just had to go and
prove you’re a witch. Didn’t you?” She pressed herself against the wall behind
her. “An honest to goodness, dress-me-in-black, voo-doo,” she panted…
“wa-wa
-
waken!”

His
teeth flashed. “I’ve been telling you that,
La-Scheme
. You just haven’t
been listening.”

Chapter
Twenty-Four

Initial session of the Court
of Oyer and Terminer began. Bridget Bishop was the first to be pronounced
guilty of witchcraft. She was condemned to death.

~Salem Witch Trials

June 2, 1692

Sanctuary

Talon’s
smile abruptly faded as the wall behind Saylym suddenly groaned, trembled violently,
and then gave a deep-throated roar and collapsed backward.

Saylym’s
arms flailed wildly in imitation of a crippled windmill, and then with a short,
startled scream, she plummeted backward with the wall.

“Saylym,” Talon shouted, lunging for her. “Merciful,
gods!” Talon grabbed for her thrashing arms, but his grasping fingers closed
around flimsy material that ripped in half. He stared blankly at the piece of
yellow cotton fabric in his hands as the light faded.
“Sheeahta!”

The
torch Saylym held pitched down along with the echo of her terrified screams
renting the air. Talon shuddered as the Stygian dark closed around him. His
ragged breathing broke the abrupt silence. Chills froze the marrow in his
bones.
“Saylym!”
He roared her name, fear slamming into his gut like a
clenched fist.

He stood at the edge of the drop, straining to hear the
sound of her voice. The absolute quiet was deafening. “Saylym! Answer me,
sweetheart!”

Fingers of silence crept into the dark as icy and desolate
as a crypt.

“I'm coming!” He snapped his fingers, but knew instantly,
it was no use. When the wall crumbled, for some odd reason, so had his ability
to perform magic. Although he knew it was useless, he tried again and again
until he panted and dripped with cold sweat.

Never in all his years had his powers been so totally
drained. He felt vulnerable and half-alive, as if part of his soul was missing.
Now he knew how a witch felt when her spirit was stolen.

Losing
one’s spiritual essence wasn’t a pleasant feeling. He didn’t know how he was
going to accomplish it, but he had to get out of the contract he had with the guild.
His days as an assassin were finished.

Eventually,
he returned to the water-soaked shop and looked about, numb with fear. It was a
feeling he’d never felt before and hoped he never felt again. Violent tremors
shook his body. His wet clothes stuck to him, clammy and cold as the grave.

Terror clogged his throat as the numbness began to wear
off.

How ironic that he had come here to eliminate Saylym’s
spirit and how paradoxical it would be if her spirit shifted into another plane
from the fall, just when he’d realized he was crazy about her.

When
had he begun to care about her?

After considering it for a moment, he knew exactly when it
had happened. From the first moment she called for her Prince Charming, he’d
been a goner. He’d known then he had to have her. He hadn’t cared that she was
an
Impure.
Oh, he’d made noises about her
illumrof
blood, but
deep down, he hadn’t cared enough to stop his pursuit. But that was lust.

Her
soft laughter and her graceful twirl had called to him. That was need.

He
needed her in his life. He needed her softness, and her gentleness.

She
owned property now. She owned him and his heart. She’d taken half his heart
prisoner when she took the time to help celebrate a lonely old witch’s
birthday. She captured the rest of his heart when she cared for a little boy
and his scraped knees. He belonged to her from those moments, and he hadn’t
even known it.

Shivering, Talon searched frantically through boxes of
junk and clutter beneath the counter where Saylym’s cash register sat perched
like a griffin. Maybe he could find something useful to aid him in reaching
her.

The gentle wisp of Vox’s breath touched his cheek as the
owl settled on his shoulder.

“She’s alive, Prince. Injured and rendered unconscious,
but she is breathing. The drop isn’t as far as you feared.”

“How
far, Vox?”

“I do not know how far, Sire. Several rope lengths, I
believe. Mayhap, two or three stories deep.”

“Two or three stories? That’s too far, Vox. She could have
broken every bone in her body.”

Dragging
down box after box and scattering the contents across the floor, Talon held up
a second lighter with a grunt of satisfaction. He couldn’t suppress the hiss of
triumph as he spotted a length of coiled rope beneath the counter. “Thank you,
gods,” he muttered.

He
hadn’t had a clue as to how he was going to get to her without it. He couldn’t
just leap into the black hole and follow her.

Without
much hope, he focused on the front door and mumbled a soft chant. The lock slid
silently into place. Thank the gods! His magic seemed to work in the store. The
last thing he needed was intruders distracting him.

Quickly, he looped the rope across his shoulder. It seemed
as if Saylym had been down in that bloody hole for an eternity. She hadn’t
responded to his frantic calls. He had no idea how seriously she was injured.

Talon
made his way back down the slippery stairway to the cellar. Thank the gods
there was a second torch stuck in a slot near the water valve.

“Saylym!”
No reply. He swore softly. The injuries she’d sustained might not allow him to
move her to safety. He didn’t know what he’d do then.

Looping
the end of the rope around the water valve, he tossed the other end into the
gaping cavity. Leaning over, he waved the torch back and forth, but he couldn’t
see. There was nothing but a black fissure that even the flames couldn’t
penetrate.

Hell, the rope might not have even reached the bottom. He
prayed he wasn’t left dangling mid-air with nothing but open space below him.
He had no way of knowing until he descended, but no matter what, he couldn’t
leave Saylym alone there in the dark, injured.

As Talon lowered himself over the side of the wall, he
thought about her denials of being a witch. How could she own and operate a
magic shop and not believe in magic? Did she simply maintain the shop for
believers of the Wiccan, occult, and Pagan without believing herself? Knowing
Saylym, that was probably so.

But
how was it possible that she didn’t know she was a witch?

And
why?

How
could she
not
know such a thing?

It was as if her mind had been completely erased of the
knowledge of what she was. He stilled. Shit! That was it. She had a hex on her.
Her memory had been tampered with. If he ever got his hands on the person
guilty of such a thing, he’d ring their damned necks!

It
was no wonder she bungled her magic. A witch who didn’t know she was a witch
was indeed, very dangerous. With her bungling magic, she could accidentally
cast a spell that brought down the walls between the
illumrof
and Ru-Noc
realms. She could create catastrophic storms, gigantic tidal waves. There were
endless possibilities and all of them tragic.

The
illumrof
could come to realize there truly were
witches and existing worlds parallel to their own. They could become aware of
faeries and leprechauns, vampires and werewolves, gods and goddesses.

They would realize there was an Underworld ruled by Titan,
the King of Death. That Dym, his son, could be merciless when forcing the
Chosen
Ones
to keep their appointment with Death.

Panic and mayhem would rule, because
illumrofs
were
not ready to accept these other worlds.

All the existing realms would be cast back into the Dark
Ages. The destruction—the chaos and slaughter—gods, the slaughter would be
worse than the Salem tragedy. Much, much worse. And it had been far worse than
the
illumrof
remembered or history indicated.

He had no choice but to report what he’d discovered about
Saylym to the Guild, but not before their bonding ceremony. By then, it would
be too late for the Guild to act. Without knowing who had placed the spell on
Saylym, he couldn’t reverse it. There was always the possibility of hidden
traps and hexes. He could end up causing Saylym to go insane. Not that she wasn’t
crazy already.

The ancients wouldn’t dare order the death of his mate,
especially if she was carrying his child. Therefore, if he wanted to save
Saylym’s soul from oblivion, he had to bed her and breed her.

She
would despise him for that bit of trickery, but he didn’t have time to romance
her or to discuss the finer details of their relationship. That chance had now
come and gone.

Before
he returned to face the guild with the incriminating information that she
wasn’t aware she was a witch and she was hexed, the bonding and breeding must
have already been accomplished. There were just too many things piling up
against her.

Then there was Black Drayke. The warlock was unpredictable
and deadly dangerous.

Sooner or later, he was going to have to kill the warlock
and that wasn’t going to be easy. Black Drayke was strong and his powers came
from the dark side of magic.

Talon took a moment to wrap the rope around his wrist, and
with one hand, he worked his way down the wall. The muscles in his shoulders
screamed in agony, but he dared not let go of the torch in his other hand.

The circular walls closed around him. It was like
descending into an ancient well or the belly of the Underworld. The walls were
made of cut stone, jagged, and uneven. Water seeped through crevices, icy cold
on his fingers. The hand-sized fissures were crusted with damp, slimy moss
making handholds dangerously slick.

It
took forever to reach the bottom, but at last, his foot touched the ground. The
soil squished wet and mushy beneath his boots, but it was better than thin air.

As
Vox had reported, it wasn’t quite as far down as it appeared from the top, just
very dark. Talon swung the torch around, searching the darker shadows nearest
him.

There
she was.

Facing
away from him, Saylym lay crumpled to one side of the drop. He jabbed the end
of the torch into the soft mud and hunkered down beside her. Gently, he turned
her toward him.

“Please,”
he muttered. “Please, be alive, baby.”

Her soft moan eased the tension and fear in his soul.
Tears stung his eyes as he saw her bruised and scraped face. Dirt and blood
caked one side of her cheek. There was an inch long gash over her right eye
that ended in her hairline and blood oozed from it, thick and sluggish. Her
right wrist was misshapen, bruised and swollen, obviously fractured. She was
wet and mud covered her clothes and hair but to him, she’d never looked more
beautiful.

“Aw, my
La-Scheme
, look what you’ve done to
yourself.”

Those
beautiful, soft, tri-colored eyes fluttered open and she looked back at him
with dull confusion. The sparkle was gone and in its place, cloudiness,
uncertainty and pain.

She
drew in a shaky breath. “Talon? Why did you hit me?”

“I
didn’t hit you,
k
ieran
, you fell.”

A
ghost of a smile flitted across her mouth. “Gotcha,” she said faintly.