The Halloween Collection (15 page)

I rather liked simplicity in my spells. A
candle, some incense, and intent were all a girl really needed to
get what she wanted. On a normal day, my intent wasn’t worth crap,
but at Samhain—with the veil thin and magick hanging heavy in the
air—my intent was epic.

My wand was already humming with power when
I picked it up. I felt it connect to the energy inside me when my
palm wrapped around the wooden surface—like two interlocking puzzle
pieces. I inscribed a pentagram over the altar with its pointed
quartz crystal tip and intoned,

Kitty cat tails and bat wings dark

Eyes of the wolf and yellow duck’s beak,

Ogre’s fingers and a pirate’s heart,

Bring to me the one I seek!

I was so accustomed to disaster that I
expected some kind of explosion. Instead, nothing but a slight
pop
heralded
his kidnap—er, entrance.

He looked exactly as I remembered him, but
it had only been three years so that wasn’t abnormal. What
was
abnormal
was the way my heart pounded at the sight of him. The way my palms
grew moist and the bottom dropped out of my abdomen. The way every
fiber of me wanted to wrap myself up in his arms and stay
there.

Slane’s hair was the color of sunshine and
it grazed his jaw bone with each movement of his head. One side was
always tucked behind an ear, and the other fell into his incredibly
blue eyes. The hoops in his ears were new—I liked them—and his skin
was much more tanned than usual. His tall, muscular form was draped
in a monk’s robes and he held a big pumpkin-shaped bowl of sweets
between his hands.

“Buddhist monks don’t have hair,” I pointed
out to him, waving my wand in his face.

“Gretchen?” he blinked at me, dropping the
bowl of sweets so that they scattered across the floor. My mouth
watered as I saw several chocolate kisses go sliding under the
futon. “What’s going on?”

“Welcome to my home,” I said sweetly, while
sweeping one arm out in a dramatic flourish. I used my other hand
to level my wand at him. “It’s going to be the first and last time
you ever see it.”

Slane rolled his eyes. “Gretchen, what for
the love of Hades are you talking about?”

“I’m going to break the bond,” I told him
coolly, poking him in the chest with my wand as he stepped forward,
too close for comfort.

“Are you still going on about this?” He
rubbed his brow with one hand, wrinkling his nose. “Gretchen, it
was a car.”

“It was my 1968 Shelby Cobra! And you
totaled it!” I yelled, maybe a little too hysterically.

“Yes, Slane,” Aura called from the dark
recesses of the house. “That is the only reason she hates you.
She’s utterly irrational.”

“Thanks, Aura. Nice to see you again!” he
answered. I wasn’t sure who I felt was more traitorous for the
exchange, my familiar or him. He cocked a half-assed grin that sent
fire across my face. “What are you going to do with that thing? Hit
me?” He laughed—the asshole laughed!—and knocked my wand hand
away.

“Don’t taunt me, Slane. I’m your worst
nightmare,” I snapped, jerking my hand back up to jab him in the
arm with the wand. Closing my eyes, I sent thoughts of fire into
the wood, hoping to burn him.

It just made my wand flare hot, burning my
own hand. I screeched, letting it fall to the ground and put my
palm to my mouth, sucking on the offending area.

Slane leaned to scoop my wand from the
hardwood, turning it so that he offered me the handle with a gentle
smile. “Or, you’re an incredibly inept witch who needs someone to
take care of you.”

“I do not. Jerk.” I turned my back to him,
studying my red palm in the candlelight.

“You’re the most exasperating woman,” Slane
growled, closing the space between us. His long fingers wrapped
around both my biceps as he jerked me to his body, swiveling me so
that his lips could fall to mine.

He tasted like magick. It was electric
between us, the pull of it moving me closer to him. I yielded to
his kiss and rubbed on him like a cat scenting its property. His
back was hard beneath my hands; his own palms pushed aside my robe,
spanning the skin beneath my tank top.

Between kisses, he murmured, “I’ve missed
you, Gretch.”

His confession struck me like a wall at
sixty miles an hour. It gave me presence of mind enough to get my
wand between us. With a push of energy through it, I sent him
flying across the room. He hit the wall hard, crumpling to the
floor like a rag doll.

“Oh my goddess, Slane, are you okay?” I
babbled, dropping my wand to the altar and rushing after him.

He groaned as I slid my hands under his arms
and helped him stumble to his feet. Brushing me off, he rubbed the
back of his head and muttered, “What is this really about,
Gretchen? Because it’s not about the car anymore. Forget the damned
car. Freedom?” He finally turned wounded eyes to me, his hand
dropping to his side. “Or do you really just not like me?”

“I could never not like you. I love you,” I
burst out, biting my lip as his eyes widened. “Damn it, Slane,
you’re my mate. I’m meant to love you.”

“Then what’s wrong with being together,
Gretchen?” He traced a path down my cheek with one thumb.

“My entire life has been ruled by my
magick,” I murmured, unconsciously leaning into his hand with my
cheek. “Learning it, doing it, trying to get it right. I never
asked to be a 7&7. It just happened. I don’t want to be a
baby-maker, pushing out seven kids and then dying young simply
because the Universe deems it so.” I felt the tears coming and
tried to stop them—unsuccessfully. “It’s about not giving in.”

Slane lifted his other hand so that he
cradled my face between both palms, forcing me to look into his
steady blue eyes. “Gretchen, I will walk away right now. I would
stay away from you forever, no matter how much I want you, no
matter how badly I would miss you, just to make you happy. Is that
what you want? Just say the word, Gretch, and I’ll leave.”

It was the tear. The single, crystalline
drop from the corner of his eye as it worked its way down his
cheek. It dripped from his jaw and splashed on to my hand resting
against his chest. When it broke upon my skin, I felt the depth of
his love for me and I knew without a doubt that magick had nothing
to do with it.

“No,” I whispered. He leaned closer, his
breath held. I shook my head harder. “No, Slane, that’s not what I
want. I want you. Forever.”

His strong arms wrapped around me, lifting
me against him as he kissed me again. That kiss was even better
than the last, a vicious, soul-searching kiss that led us to the
futon. We landed in a tangle of arms and legs, devouring one
another with a hunger born of three years apart.

The doorbell rang and I froze beneath him,
one hand full of his luscious bum and the other tangled in his
hair.

“You forgot to turn off the porchlight,
didn’t you, Gretchen?” His voice hummed against my neck. I could
feel the chuckle building up in his chest.

“For the sake of all things holy,” I
groaned, shoving him away. I fell to my knees, shoving his wayward
candy back into the bowl. “Help me gather up these sweets. We have
trick or treaters.”

* * *

I married Slane after all. We eloped to
Hawaii where a shirtless Hawaiian dude with long black hair and a
red flowered skirt married us as we stood waist deep in the ocean.
That night, on a moonless beach, we read aloud my mother’s spell by
candlelight to cement our magickal bond.

We made love beneath the stars and, of
course, I got pregnant.

I guess I’ll have my seven girls so he can
spoil them rotten, just like he does with me. He bought me a new
Shelby—I drive it
everywhere
.

Maybe I’ll die young, maybe I won’t.

Some rules are just meant to be broken.

* * *

Check out Heather’s other work:

The
Temple

Abigail

Heather Adkins is a long-time practicing witch living
in the wilds of the American South. Make her angry and she just may
turn you into a newt and boil your eyeballs in her (admittedly not
Emeril) saucepan.

http://heather.bishoffs.com/

The demons came with the night, sweeping
across the hills with fiery swords that tore through darkness and
the bodies of the villagers they left in their wake. Gabriel
gripped and released the hilt of his broad sword as he watched the
flames of Hell envelope hill after hill, each one closer than the
last. At seventeen, he was bigger than any other man in his
village, and still he feared the fanged creatures.

“Is this all there is?” his father, the
village elder, hissed as three more men joined their small army
overlooking the valley.

“Aye, ‘tis everyone.”

Gabriel turned to see the restless shadows
that were his family and friends. There were only forty men from
their village in any shape to fight, and several more who had not
lifted a sword in years. The rest of their village fled for the
caves in the cliff, where they hoped the demons would not
follow.

“We only need to stay alive long enough for
our women to make it to the cliffs,” his father said. Several men
murmured in agreement. Gabriel’s gaze returned to the demons. Fear
chilled his insides and adrenaline made him fidget.

“We’ll ambush ‘em in the valley, then run
for the cliffs,” his father went on. ”Son, you’ll stay here.”

“No, Papa,” Gabriel said. “I’m the biggest
man in the village. I’ll fight.”

“You’re no warrior, boy. You’ll stay here.
Hide yourselves, men!”

The villagers—only a few armed with swords
and the rest armed with iron tools or wood—hurried past him to take
up their positions hidden in the tall grasses of the valley’s
sloping walls. He started forward, determined to fight the beasts
that threatened his mother and younger brother.

“No, boy,” his father said and pulled him
back. “Listen to me.”

“Papa, I—”

“I swore to your mother you’d come home,
even if I didn’t. Listen to me, boy.”

“I am, Papa!” he said, eyes going to the
demons again. His father gripped his chin and forced his attention
back to him. The dim light from stars made the creases appear
deeper in his father’s leathery face, and Gabriel gazed into eyes
as dark as his.

“If Death comes for you, you tell her she
can’t have your spirit. You hear me?”

“Papa, I’m not going to die! I’m going to
kill all the demons and go home to mama!”

“Boy, you tell her, she can’t have your
spirit.”

“Papa, enough!” Gabriel snapped. “They’re
coming!”

His father looked towards the demons,
resignation crossing his features before he darted down the hill.
Gabriel followed as far as he dared before the first of the demons
crested the hill on the other side of the valley.

Their flaming swords were longer than he was
tall and clutched by hands with talons the length of his forearm.
Moonlight glinted off fangs and the scales that lined their bodies
beneath tufts of black fur. Even their horses were twice the size
of any horse he’d ever seen with eyes that glowed like the harvest
moon. His mouth dropped open and for a long moment, he forgot to
breathe.

“Now, men!” his father shouted and charged
out of the grass towards the low point in the valley.

A demon launched itself off its horse,
snapped his father’s arm with one bite of its powerful jaws, and
broke his body in half. Horrified, Gabriel watched the demon rip
the flesh off his father’s bones before tossing the carcass aside.
The fiery swords of the demons mowed through his uncles and cousins
while several more tackled his friends. Blood soaked the earth.

Paralyzed by fear, he saw the demons ride
towards him, but it was as if he watched someone else. He screamed
at the youth on the hilltop to raise his sword, to fight for his
family, to die with honor, but the fool did not move. He stood
there with the sword at his feet and his jaw slack as the demons
thundered up the hill to claim his head. As the sword descended, he
moved his lips in a scream that echoed into the night.

“You cannot have my spirit
!”

Fire, darkness, silence.

* * *

Sweet smelling grass tickled his cheeks and
rustled in the ocean breeze. Gabriel swatted it out of his face and
opened his eyes, squinting at the bright midmorning sun. He rolled
onto his back. Smoke billowed into the sky from the direction of
his village.

Demons
!

He scrambled to his feet, his stomach
turning at the sight of the carnage in the valley. Memories of his
father being cut down were fresh in his mind. He remembered the
demon charging him as well, the sword descending then…nothing. He
ran his hands over his body to make sure all his parts were there
and stopped to stare at his palms. They were covered in blood. So
was his clothing and the grass around him. It looked as if he’d
died last night, yet he was alive.

His thoughts flew to his mother and the
caves. His pulse loud in his ears, Gabriel ran down then up the
hill separating the village from the valley of death to the hill
overlooking the home he’d meant to defend. Everything was burnt to
the ground or still burning, from the dwelling he’d shared with his
family to the horses in the smithy’s corral. His eyes followed the
path the demons took, marked by a swath of scorched ground that
snaked through the grass from the village towards the cliffs—the
same path his mother would have taken.

He ran until he reached the scorched earth
then slowed to take in the bodies lining the demons’ path. His
panicked gaze flew from body to body as he made his way to the
cliff’s edge. He caught a blur of white from the corner of his eye
but dismissed the fleeting image as nothing more than a lucky
sheep, until a sweet, sing song voice penetrated his maddened
search.