Dylan's Witch: 10 (Supernatural Bonds) (25 page)

He reached, ignoring the baring of Dylan’s teeth, though Seraphine barred the demon from touching her with a hand around his wrist.

Ice filled his eyes. A chill spread from them, so dark and deep it froze the breath in Dylan’s chest and tensed his body in a flight or fight response.

The demon smiled and a thaw came, though Dylan understood it would never be more than illusion.

“As I told your lover, even my kind must occasionally suffer the loss of one prize in order to gain a much larger, and in this case, unexpected one, given that after Gressil and Oeillet, I am the lord summoned when the portal opens. As such, it is my right to unleash it from the blade should I wish to do so.”

“And you do,” Seraphine murmured. “That’s why you were willing to cancel all debt between us.”

“Yes.”

“And the cost to me? To Dylan?”

“To your lover?” He shrugged. “I cannot gauge that, though no harm will come to him physically, or to you for that matter, not with me here to ensure the sigils are drawn correctly and the words needed to evoke the working are spoken in the right order. But in all likelihood it will drain away your gift. If you’re left with the ability to harness magic at all, it might be no more than any human can accomplish with luck and effort.”

Seraphine’s fear of that loss washed into Dylan and with it, he caught a glimpse of a young girl and the driving need to see her properly trained. But he also felt Seraphine’s fierce belief that they were meant to be together, and a darker one matching his own, that one day he’d turn his gun upon himself if the whispers and screams weren’t silenced.

Once he might have been glad to see an end to Seraphine’s involvement in witchcraft. But he ached at the prospect of her losing something so important to her. His arm tightened on her. He could withstand the whispers and screams. She could strengthen the charm again, and besides, wouldn’t they die down if Lucifer’s Blade wasn’t being used?

He hugged her to him, her back to his chest, and grit his teeth at the way the hum in his body ratcheted up as if she served as a conduit for the dagger. “Or we could leave things as they are, Seraphine. We could guard the blade. Who better to do it than a witch married to a homicide cop?”

He could feel the joy those words caused her in the shiver of her body against his.

The demon’s smile was the promise of sunshine and happy ever after. “An excellent suggestion.”

From nowhere, the charm Arioc had taken appeared, dangling from a chain whose links were no longer broken. “My protection would extend to your lover, Seraphine. Accept my offer of it and agree to become the blade’s guardian. Why risk becoming a weak, powerless mortal when it’s unnecessary?”

Refusal stiffened her spine.
Accept the offer
, Dylan said, jealousy and fury a hot tangle in his chest. It had taken a minute to process, but now he knew the demon had risked Seraphine’s life by allowing her to be taken.

He didn’t want her bound to the arrogant son of bitch. Despised even the thought of it, but he hated the idea of her losing something important to her even worse. “Accept the offer,” he repeated, though he thought she’d heard the unspoken words.

He became sure of it with her
No
.

“No. It’s not safe. Trust me, Dylan, it’s not safe. Eventually one of us, if not both, would lose our lives because of the blade.”

Resolve filled her.
Do what you think is right
, he said. This was her world. She was the expert here.

Her hand tightened on the athame. Her attention went to the demon. “I call on you to honor our bargain, Arioc. All debt between us is now paid in full. With my possession of the blade, you will assist me in unbinding Dylan from the portal.”

“Very well, Seraphine. Our bargain will be fulfilled.”

He flicked his fingers at the altar and flames erupted from the circular channel meant to be filled with sacrificial blood, a flash fire smelling of brimstone and charnel house and patchouli.

Bile rose in Dylan’s throat. He struggled to hold his breath. Terror coated his skin in icy sweat, the whispers and screams clawing and pounding against the protection the charm he wore provided.

“I trust you,” he managed, lips opening only the bare minimum necessary, the rest of it,
but I don’t trust him
, choked off. Through the bond he now freely admitted existed, he understood that to trust Arioc was to court death, and for his benefit, for the chance of a future together, she’d done just that.

It humbled him. Widened his heart further to love.

“What will happen to those two?” Seraphine asked, gesturing to the bound women.

“I made a bargain. In exchange for a possible end to their enslavement, Gressil and Oeillet agreed not to allow you to be unnecessarily harmed and to arrange for you to see your surroundings before surrendering you to the witch. As part of the working, they will be freed in such a way that you and your human mate won’t become the targets of their vengeance.”

The demon lord walked over and picked up the medallions by their chains. He dropped one of them onto Helene Lindley and she struggled weakly to dislodge the very thing she’d reached for earlier. The other he placed against Camille’s bare skin, uttering a low, guttural word that froze both women in place.

He returned to stand in front of Seraphine and Dylan. “Are you ready?”

Hell no!
But all Dylan said was, “Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

A flick of Arioc’s fingers and what looked like a piece of black chalk appeared between them. He turned toward the altar and held his hand above the channel.

Seraphine took Dylan’s hand in the one not holding Lucifer’s Blade.
This is the right choice
.
This is the only choice
.

And yet as Arioc spoke in the same fluid language in which he’d bargained with Gressil and Oeillet, she ached at the possible loss of her gift. She feared being shorn of something that had defined a large part of her life.

The heartstone burned at her wrist. A glance at
Dylan and she knew the future they would make would also come to define her.

Even without being able to work magic, I can still instruct Chesna
.

If Electra will ever allow it.

The chalk Arioc held dripped like wax. But instead of becoming a black puddle when it struck the altar, it turned into gold and spread in a weave of complex sigils, coming full circle and ending that circle with a smaller one, and in its center was the glyph symbolizing her core, the part of her that could call magic and meld it to spells and charms.

Arioc spoke again, his words striking the blade she still held, and she felt his power reach through her and into Dylan.

Against her hand, the cut across his palm opened and began to bleed.

The slightest of nods indicated what Arioc spoke next would be the phrase required for her to activate the spell that would unleash portal from blade.

She acknowledged his nod with one of her own, memorized his slow, clearly enunciated words.

When he went quiet, she untangled her fingers from Dylan’s.

Even without physical contact, she heard Dylan’s vehement shout of
no
! when he understood she intended to touch Lucifer’s Blade to her skin.

Yes
, she told him, eyes meeting his.
Yes.

She opened her palm with the knife before putting the athame on the altar and once again clasping Dylan’s hand. Their mingled blood dripped into the smaller circle and became a flame spreading away from them on either side, its light catching on the ruby eyes in the blade’s hilt.

The fire reached inward toward the center of the altar, unnatural in intensity. Flames licked the dagger, melting the gems set in a goat’s face.

They dripped onto the stone altar like a blood offering. Darkness spread from the places they struck, infinite blackness reaching into realms awash with terror.

Seraphine’s heart thundered and was matched by Dylan’s. The flames in the channel roared, way out of proportion to their actual size. And when the fire circle finally closed, searing agony scorched through Seraphine as her power was pulled from her core and into the spell.

Arioc had said she might burn out her gift and she understood then, he meant it literally. Tears ran down her cheeks as for what seemed like an eternity she couldn’t breathe.

When the pain abruptly ceased, she gasped. Her mouth tasted of ash and her chest felt full of it, like charcoal left in a heap at her core.

There was a second to acknowledge loss and then there was only raw terror as a being burst free of the medallion placed on Helene Lindley.

Gressil. His skin was the color of fresh blood and great ram’s horns spiraled on either side of his head.

He swooped. Gathered his struggling prize then leapt above the flames that were gaining height from the altar channel.

He disappeared into the depths that had once been stone. And as if his departure signaled Oeillet’s, the second demon lord shimmered into existence with skin the pale of death and each of his arms ending in a pair of sharpened bone-white blades.

Like Gressil, he gathered his prey and cleared the flames to disappear into the portal.

“If you hope to escape this inferno with your life, run when I make my exit,” Arioc said.

“And the athame?” Seraphine asked.

He shrugged. “It will be nothing more than a dagger. Your police or your firefighters will find it in the rubble. Tell them what story you will about the events here and how it is that those who wielded Lucifer’s Blade are now beyond human law.”

His gaze flicked toward Dylan. Then back to her. “We will meet again, Seraphine.”

Promise and threat combined before he leapt and Dylan reacted instinctively. Quickly. Jerking her away from the altar, shielding her with his body as the room behind them became the start of a conflagration that spread in minutes to consume the entirety of the house.

Fine tremors moved through Dylan as he held Seraphine behind the gates he’d smashed through in order to reach her in time. Her back was pressed to his chest, his jacket the only thing shielding her nakedness as they watched the powerful, unnatural fire destroy all evidence.

He relived the minutes before his arrival. The panic and fear. Preferring those to the events inside the house.

His arms tightened at how close he’d come to losing her.

But you didn’t.

His cop mind demanded he ask,
How was I even able to get inside? Shouldn’t there have been protections in place?

Summoning, containing and binding a demon lord required all of Lindley’s power. She would have drained the external wards to keep herself safe, but that magic wasn’t crafted to prevent being shot.

In the distance he could hear sirens, police and fire.

“We’ll need to get our stories straight.”

That’s easy enough to do.

He might have smiled, except the bond that allowed him to hear her words allowed him to know what freeing him from the blade had cost her. Tears clogged his throat.

This was his fault. He’s wanted her from the moment he first saw her. If only he’d given in instead of fighting it, then maybe he wouldn’t have been foolish enough to have handled the blade. If—

Stop.
She turned to face him.
We’re together now, that’s what matters.

Hope flared as it occurred to him that if they could talk this way, didn’t it mean she still had magic?

No. It’s because we are both human and each possess a heartstone. They resonate with each other
. She touched her mouth to his, licked across the seam.
Like we do.
With time I might recover my gift, but whatever the future holds, I want to share it with you
.

His lips parted. His tongued stroked hers.
I love you
.

Epilogue

Hot water struck Dylan’s back but it wasn’t nearly as hot as the woman in his arms.
His wife
. Jesus. His wife. And he smiled because now he understood the urgency that had driven Trace almost straight from the site of Aislinn’s rescue and into the chambers of a justice of the peace.

He nibbled Seraphine’s neck, her shoulder, ground his cock against shapely buttocks as his hands roamed upward to cup her breasts. “Maybe we should forget about the party and just stay home,” he said.

Her home.
Their
home now.

A dip. A thrust. And his cock was between her legs, teasing against swollen cunt lips and engorged clit.

She moaned, then
he
did when she leaned forward, placing her palms against the shower wall, offering access and trying to entice him into joining his body to hers.

He tormented instead with the slow rub of his cock against her clit. Loved the husky demand in her voice when she said, “Dylan,” the echo of it sounding along the bond, and fuck, he couldn’t imagine not having that with her, so even apart he had only to reach mentally to know where she was and that she was safe.

She captured his cock in an effort to guide it to her opening. He pumped through her closed fist then pulled away, withholding what she wanted even as his dick screamed its need.

He continued to drive her higher with the capture of her clit between his fingers, with possessive, sucking bites to her neck and shoulder. Smiling against her skin when he realized if he wasn’t careful, he was going to end up with a nickname similar to Trace’s.

“Now, Dylan.” Panted demand this time.

Her need pulsed through him, increasing his own. “Say please.”

“Are you asking to be turned into a frog?”

He laughed, joyous because she probably could do just that—
now
. Despite her fears after fueling Arioc’s spell, an ember of her gift had remained, deeply buried.

It had taken days for a hint of it to emerge, but once it started to, it had quickly grown stronger, until it became a burning flame at the core of her being—not that he wanted to look more closely at it.