The Silverwing's Sorceress: THe Shadow Slayers, Book 2.5 (2 page)

After leaning toward her wrist and drawing a deep breath, he finally opened his eyes. “You smell like these mountains. Fresh and pure. Even at night, you’re sunshine through the clouds.”

Relief coursing through her, she planted a quick kiss on his forehead. If he was back to scenting the things around him, he was fine. When it came to the opposite sex, witches relied more on energy fields than pheromones, but Demiáre were another story. She’d never imagined that beings descended of fallen angels could be so carnal. But after witnessing firsthand how Demiáre society worked, she decided she’d never met a species more led around by their very well-equipped…noses.

“Looks like you’ll survive.” She ruffled his hair and rose to her feet. “Now to turn off that ward.”

“Be careful,” Jaxon said to her back as he watched her mount the steps.

After a minute, she peered around the corner of the open door, her olive-green eyes wide, and waved him inside. “Come on in. You’re not gonna believe it. It’s huge.”

He slowed as he approached the threshold. It wasn’t that he minded the pain of the ward, but he wasn’t eager to look like an ass in front of Abbey. Head held high, he stepped into the foyer and stifled a sigh of relief when nothing happened.

“You’re right. It’s not small.” But then where Jaxon came from, houses rarely were. He’d spent more than two decades on Mercury Island, a tropical paradise in the Indian Ocean where the ladies of his clan lived in sprawling homes to accommodate the size of their harems. But in the past six months he’d grown used to a cramped two-bedroom apartment and sharing a bed with Abbey. As tortuous as it was to sleep mere inches from her, there wasn’t anywhere else he’d rather be when the sun went down.

Abbey stopped and twirled in a slow circle, her gaze sifting over the unfamiliar surroundings. He might have guessed she would have been pleased by the renovations, but the downward tilt of her pink lips told him otherwise.

“Why would they keep this from me?” she asked. “Does Grammy D even know what Claude did to the cabin?”

He shrugged in response. “She did give you the keys.”

“Yeah, because the locks had been changed—not the whole house.”

“Dora is a straightforward woman. I’m sure she would have told you if she’d known.” Abbey had taken him to her grandmother’s for dinner on several occasions, and the older witch had made it clear she wasn’t overjoyed that her granddaughter was living with two Demiáre—
Fallen
, as they were known amongst the witches. “It was your father’s home?”

When Abbey walked into the kitchen, Jaxon trailed behind her. She looked through the cupboards, then glanced in his direction. “My father’s and my mother’s. My dad’s younger brother, Claude, was the executor of the estate and took care of their holdings, like the cabin. It made my grandma mad at the time, since she spent a lot of time up here, too. Who knew Claude would turn out to be a…a vandal!”

If she wasn’t so upset, he might have smiled. Vandalism didn’t quite seem to cover it. “I’m sorry, Abbey.”

“The table… Where’s my mother’s kitchen table? And right here—” she pointed to the window above the sink, “—there’s supposed to be a dreamcatcher. My father made it for me out of yarn and some feathers he found in the woods. But then, why would it be here? This isn’t their kitchen, is it? This isn’t even their house.”

She wandered to one end of the kitchen and back, her sweet face twisted in an angry scowl. “He had no right to tear down the cabin. And where did he get the money to build this? I took control of the estate when I turned twenty-five last year, and trust me, money wasn’t something my parents left behind.”

“Then perhaps Claude is the one we should be asking.”

When her stomach grumbled, she put her hand over it. “My car is toast, my childhood cabin is gone, my family’s been keeping things from me. How can I be hungry now?”

“We haven’t eaten since noon. There’s no shame in being hungry.”

Whoever had overseen the building of the new structure had spared no expense. Even the kitchen looked like it was modeled after a fine restaurant. But if there was a phone in the house, it wasn’t here in the kitchen. Jaxon opened the refrigerator and, not surprisingly, found it empty.

“Don’t waste your worry. The electricity is on.” He checked the range and it sparked with blue flame. “The gas is working. I can find you a meal and have it prepared within the hour. Do you like rabbit?”

She pulled a can from the cupboard. “I’d prefer chicken noodle.”

He walked to the cupboard and peered over her shoulder. The shelves were fully stocked with nonperishable items and what looked like emergency rations. “Then you won’t be disappointed. It looks as if your uncle has stock in the chicken noodle company.”

Abbey opened the door to the large pantry and fumbled for the light. “Hold on,” she said from inside the dark room, “it has one of those weird light timers that you have to twist.”

The light clicked on, illuminating a room that was piled floor to ceiling with jugs of drinking water along the left side, but just three bags of sugar on the back wall and a meager two salt shakers on the right. With all the water in the pantry and the canned food in the kitchen, it reminded Jaxon of an outpost or a lodge that was preparing for a bleak winter.

Abbey set the can on the counter. “Looks like we have enough food for a month, but regardless of what Kara said about it not being safe at the apartment, I’m ready to head back. It’s not just my car or the renovations. I have a bad feeling about this place.”

Jaxon had to agree, but when he thought of flashing, just the initial stir of his will, that same feeling descended on him as when he’d had trouble flashing from the car. He peeled off his T-shirt and flexed the trapezius muscles along his upper back. Nothing happened. “I feel the pull of witch magic, like a very strong safeguard, perhaps. It began when I tried to carry you from the car. I didn’t want to frighten you, but I almost wasn’t able to transport us.”

The implications of what he was saying washed the color from her cheeks. “Are you serious? You could have gone down with the car?”

“
We
could have gone down with the car. You’re leaving out the most important part…”
You
, he wanted to say.

“Your wings aren’t working
at all
?”

“No. I can’t flash, and my wings don’t seem to be responding to my will. I’m…grounded, Abbey.” Admitting he didn’t have use of his wings felt like declaring he had a two-inch penis—to the woman he most wanted to prove otherwise. “Is it possible the mountain has a larger ward at work?”

When he contracted his shoulders and biceps, trying for the sensation that usually accompanied expanding his wings, Abbey’s eyes darted from his face to his feet…everywhere but his bare chest. Considering he never wore a shirt to bed, it was odd for her to be embarrassed now.

“I’ve heard of sacred places being warded like that,” she answered, clearing her throat, “but Witch Mountain isn’t exactly sacred.”

“Perhaps not, but the ward that kept me from entering this house isn’t the same one binding my wings.”

“Why don’t you put your shirt on so we can check the rest of the house? It sounds like we could be here for a couple of days until Grammy D wonders why she hasn’t heard from us, or I get the no-fly zone figured out.”

He slipped the T-shirt over his head, then followed Abbey up the stairs to a long hallway. One by one they opened the doors to find fully furnished bedrooms, seven in all, with the eighth being the master room. “I’m assuming we’ll take the largest of the rooms?”

Abbey froze at the door of the larger suite. “We?”

Jaxon rocked back on his heels. “You don’t want me to share your bed?”

Abbey had wanted him by her side since the night he’d brought her home from the attack…the night Brakken’s sadistic son had tied her up and carved that hideous symbol into the tender flesh of her abdomen.

Why wouldn’t she want him beside her now?

Yes, he’d tried to kiss her last night, but he never imagined she would hold that damn kiss against him like this. “Are you still angry with me?”

She stepped into the room and turned on the light. “Why would I be angry? I just thought now that we aren’t stuck in such a small place, you’d want your own room.”

The idea of leaving her alone all night in a strange house was as appealing as drinking curdled goat’s milk. After countless nights side by side, why in the name of hell’s sweet fury should he and Abbey sleep alone?

He turned. “I’m going to see what I can salvage from the car.”

“I thought you were going when the sun came up. I don’t even have a flashlight.”

“I’ll be fine.” He tried to relax his fists and allow the tension in his shoulders to ease. He couldn’t guilt Abbey into wanting him, and she had enough to worry about without him adding to her burden.

“Do you want me to go with you? I can help carry stuff.”

Jaxon forced a smile. “No. I won’t be gone long. Why don’t you use your time to get settled here. Perhaps there’s a phone somewhere.”

When Jaxon turned on his heel, Abbey shook her head. Why was he so sensitive about sharing a flippin’ room? Because truth be told, no matter how much she needed him to hold her right now, she was sick of being his friendly foot warmer.

She watched him stride down the hall toward the stairs. The dim light coming from the ceiling lamps accented his sturdy, muscular build, taunting her with every step he took, every shift of his hips and shoulders.

When he disappeared around the corner, she stepped back into the big, foreign bedroom and sighed. The old Abbey would have shown him there was more to her. She would have pursued and she would have conquered. But then, the old Abbey didn’t have a festering wound covering the entire expanse of her stomach. When she’d realized he was kissing her out of pity last night, she’d thought she was going to puke. It had felt so right…and then Kara and Tray walked in and it suddenly went so wrong.

The interruption was all the excuse Jaxon had needed. After Kara towed Tray out the door, Abbey waited, wondering what Jaxon would do next. She’d crossed her arms over her chest, overwhelmed by everything going on around her and he’d stood across the room from her, staring, probably wracking his brain on how to let her down easy.

And sure enough, not more than a minute later, he started the apologies. Sorry for this. Sorry for that. When what he really meant was that he was sorry he wasn’t attracted to her.

So why was she doing this to herself? Why was she even allowing herself to want him? Life was messy enough without mixing friendship and sex with an immortal man who was as perfect as she was damaged.

She walked to the beveled mirror mounted above the chest of drawers and hiked her dress up around her breasts. After hours in the car and the chaos of the crash, the bandages around her flat belly were worse for the wear. Enough clear pink fluid had seeped out to stain her dress.

The first bandage was simply layer after layer of stretchy, damp cloth wrapped around her stomach and lower back. But after she peeled that away, it revealed the sterile gauze beneath it. It was a sticky, souring mess.

She held a hand over the gauze and found the bathroom, then fumbled at the panel of switches until she located the one that controlled the lights over the double sinks.

When the last of the gauze had been peeled away and discarded, Abbey stood back and looked at herself—really looked—as she’d avoided doing for weeks now. And what she saw broke her heart.

Brakken’s sign ran from her pubic bone to her navel—a rudimentary snake twining around the outline of a dagger, and surrounding that, the symbol of the sun with etched rays radiating out on every side. The deep incisions of Gable’s blade were as stark and ugly now as the day he’d cut her. Instead of the wound closing, as every wound should over time, it was as though Demiáre magic held the skin apart, gaping and oozing.

At her grandmother’s urging, Abbey had tried having a doctor from the coven stitch her up—once. The resulting infection had been so bad, the skin had rotted along the sutures, leaving the furrows of the symbol even wider in its wake.

Abbey wasn’t unattractive—she was hideous. Of course Jaxon didn’t want to be intimate with her. He might think she smelled nice, but that clearly wasn’t enough. And could she blame him? Simply staring at herself in the mirror was enough to turn her stomach.

“Screw this,” she said, using a small piece of tissue paper to dab at her eyes before measuring out long swaths and pressing them to her skin. They would stick, of course, but she didn’t have any other options at the moment.

Deciding to make better use of her time than standing here feeling sorry for herself, Abbey rewrapped the bandage and then searched the house top to bottom for a phone.

Exploring the new house was just the distraction she needed. In her condition, she had no business contemplating taking a reluctant lover anyway.

Jaxon made the three-mile hike quickly, jogging to the spot where the Neon had careened over the railing. He hated leaving Abbey alone, even for a short while, but he needed space to think. As a matter of fact,
space
was exactly what he was thinking of—whether he should allow Abbey to continue constructing that protective hedge around her heart to keep him at a distance or whether he should take a chance and plow through it.