Bewitching The Dragon
Bewitching The Dragon
Jane Kindred
One Night with a Dragon…Ione Carlisle worked hard to be accepted by the Sedona Covent, but now everything is falling apart. Especially when she lets loose for one wild night on the town and ends up with the one man she should be avoiding at all costs – the man who came to Sedona to fire her. He ignites in her a carnal need that she can't and won't ignore…Buttoned-up assayer Dev Gideon's loyalty to the Leadership Council should be reason enough to resist Ione. Never mind that she stirs the ancient demon secretly bound within him. But their blood connection is undeniable. And now Dev must risk his reputation, and his soul, to save Ione from a vigilante intent on destroying her and the entire Covent, even if that means unleashing the monster inside.
One Night with a Dragon...
Ione Carlisle worked hard to be accepted by the Sedona Covent, but now everything is falling apart. Especially when she lets loose for a wild night on the town and ends up with the one man she should be avoiding at all costs—the man who came to Sedona to fire her. He ignites in her a carnal need that she can’t and won’t ignore...
Buttoned-up assayer Dev Gideon’s loyalty to the Leadership Council should be reason enough to resist Ione. Never mind that she stirs the ancient demon secretly bound within him. But their blood connection is undeniable. And now Dev must risk his reputation, and his soul, to save Ione from a vigilante intent on destroying her and the entire Covent, even if it means unleashing the monster inside.
“Your skin. It’s...” Dev looked down at their hands, where the live current seemed to dance between them.
“Electrifying?” Ione drew him to the couch. “Not bragging. You have the same effect on me. I think Kur’s blood has mixed with your own and it responds to the Lilith blood in mine. As mine does to yours.”
He sat beside her, bemused.
“I’m not sure what it means, but I’m not going to bother trying to figure it out right now. Suffice it to say, you’re the last person I should be attracted to. You’ve been sent to take everything away from me.”
“That’s not exactly—”
“And yet I find you irresistible.”
Dev ran his tongue along his bottom lip. “Well, I know this isn’t necessarily the wisest thing,” he said, rising and sweeping her up. He hiked up her skirt as she wrapped her legs around him. “But it is definitely what I need.”
JANE KINDRED is the author of the Demons of Elysium series of M/M erotic fantasy romance, the Looking Glass Gods dark fantasy tetralogy and the gothic paranormal romance The Lost Coast. Jane spent her formative years ruining her eyes reading romance novels in the Tucson sun and watching Star Trek marathons in the dark. She now writes to the sound of San Francisco foghorns while two cats slowly but surely edge her off the side of the bed.
Jane is represented by Sara Megibow of KT Literary.
Bewitching the Dragon
Jane Kindred
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For my big sisters, who may not always get why I write what I write but have always encouraged me to write it.
Contents
Cover (#ub895b937-299b-53e1-8cff-5a96fb3dd1b4)
Back Cover Text (#u72876699-7644-50bf-af54-c7ff5ba4c880)
Introduction (#uef68993e-f95f-5ace-852b-c1d79f357a83)
About the Author (#u86c3848d-e779-5e43-8818-6216eb108294)
Title Page (#ub7fb8875-2f5f-5347-962b-d71e1166fbd7)
Dedication (#u9b005fd9-9877-583b-9c16-683955db0044)
Chapter 1 (#ue046faff-d6e4-5a6a-9d0d-da6eb3b362d0)
Chapter 2 (#uf7fe16de-bb86-5413-8243-7534bc03e38a)
Chapter 3 (#u93bed648-c066-54cb-aea8-0345be52ba03)
Chapter 4 (#ufe779bd8-e594-5b89-ae47-7fd962a83196)
Chapter 5 (#u611cd338-af9a-52b0-9a77-29be0bde5cd3)
Chapter 6 (#u2c1fc2f6-8404-501a-8edf-4b645d52eb19)
Chapter 7 (#ud87d8609-0e56-5a2e-8e40-697f19b31d72)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#u01760b51-3c5e-5b7c-8c5b-260a9f903794)
There was another dead crow on her doorstep this morning. A piece of red thread encircled its neck, not as though it had been the instrument of the crow’s death but as a macabre decoration, tied into a neat bow. After finding the dead birds three days in a row, Ione had come out to get the paper this morning armed with a pair of disposable latex gloves and a small paper sack.
Given the time of year, she might have assumed this was some practical joke from a neighborhood kid, maybe someone who knew she was a high priestess in the Craft. A setup, in poor taste, for a Halloween trick of which Ione was the punch line.
But it was no mystery who was behind this. This was a message from her ex. Carter Hanson Hamilton was up to his old tricks.
With the crow carefully deposited into the paper bag, she carried it around the side of the house to the outdoor altar—which did double duty as a brick-enclosed barbecue pit—and performed the Dispersal of Energy ritual to nullify whatever magical influence Carter might have in mind with these little gifts. The smell of smoke from the small blaze in the pit wouldn’t be completely out of season. Though the air was sharp and crisp this morning, it hadn’t quite gotten cool enough for a fire, but it was only a little late for a barbecue.
“Go in peace,” Ione murmured as she finished the ritual. She wasn’t sure if birds had spirits, but it couldn’t hurt to commend this one’s to a better rest.
The “Gladys Kravitz” of the Village of Oak Creek was watching her through the blinds of the house across the street as Ione came back around to the front. Ione gave her an exaggerated wave from the porch in her bathrobe and slippers. The blinds snapped shut. Maybe Ione had watched too much Bewitched on TV Land, but that woman was a dead ringer for Samantha Stevens’s nosy neighbor.
The phone was ringing when Ione stepped inside and she managed to catch it before it rolled over to the answering machine. Her younger sister Phoebe gave her endless amounts of crap about that machine, as if Ione were the last person in the world to still have a landline.
“Ione? Sorry to bother you at home. Um, oh—it’s Cal. Sorry. This is Calvin.” The tentative, apologetic tone was typical of Calvin Yee. The elderly Asian gentleman had been Covent kin for years, far longer than Ione had even been a member of the Sedona coven, but he still treated her as if she were his boss or a school professor.
Ione smiled into the phone. “Not a problem, Cal. What’s up?”
“Uh...the others thought I should let you know—we should let you know. I, uh, volunteered to be the one to let you know.”
Ione’s heart dropped into her stomach. It was finally happening. The coven had voted to boot her out on her butt. After weeks of walking around on eggshells, they’d finally decided they couldn’t work with a high priestess who’d been stupid enough to fall for a psychotic necromancer like Carter Hamilton.
With a deep breath, she gathered her courage. “To let me know what, Cal?”
“We’ve received a summons. All of us. Each of us.”
“A summons?” She let out the held breath cautiously. “From the Superior Court?” She’d thought this business with Carter was done. He’d confessed and was sitting in prison awaiting sentencing.
“No, somebody from the Covent leadership. We’ve been ordered to appear at the temple tomorrow morning at ten.”
“I see.” Crap. Maybe she was being ousted, just not by her personal coven members.
Calvin cleared his throat a few times with a couple of false starts before he continued. “You didn’t get one, I take it.”
“No, I didn’t. Thanks, Cal. I really appreciate you letting me know.”
Ione tried not to speculate about the possible intentions of the Covent’s pending action, but it was hard not to see a summons of her coven members that excluded her as anything but a kick in the teeth. She’d worked hard to be accepted into the Covent on her own skill and merit, and even harder to prove herself worthy of leadership. At twenty-nine, she’d become the youngest high priestess in the history of the Sedona Coventry. But at thirty, thanks to being dumb enough to fall for Carter, everything was falling apart.
One thing was for certain, there was no way she was going to sit at home and wait for someone else to decide her fate. She would be at the temple in the morning, whether the Covent leadership wanted her there or not.
In the meantime she had work to do. Carter might be safely behind bars but the creeps who’d patronized his little sideline business—paying for a shade possession called a “ride-along” for the ultimate in nonconsensual sexual thrills—were still out there. One of the call girls who’d participated as a living host before dying under suspicious circumstances and ending up on the other side of the equation had implicated cops, businessmen, even lawyers and judges. And none of them had been held accountable. After Carter’s arrest, they’d scurried away like roaches into their cracks and crevices of respectability. Ione was determined to find out where they’d gone into hiding and bring them out into the light.
Sedona’s nightlife was hardly that, but Ione had followed the rumor mill to a dive bar near Oak Creek Canyon that was unusually lively and catered to the kind of clientele Carter’s side business had thrived on. The mixture of college students and favorite sons plus a steady, inevitable stream of tourists provided a wealth of potential clients—as well as plenty of unwary young women to exploit. It wasn’t really the sort of place Ione Carlisle looked at home in. But she wasn’t Ione Carlisle tonight.
Magic, she’d learned, was merely a matter of perception. Change the perception of a thing and you might change the thing itself. With a simple spell that amounted to little more than magical cosmetics and dressing the part, Ione had remade her image into the one she wished to project. She still had her favorite clothes from her aborted year at college before becoming insta-mom to a teenager and twin ten-year-olds after the death of her parents. With a pair of leather pants and a black tank, a red, zip-up leather jacket and a slick of bright cherry lipstick that pulled the look together, Ione had invoked a shadow glamour.
The pert-nosed, blue-eyed blonde with loose waves around her shoulders—nothing like Ione’s gray-green eyes and straight midnight-brown and bronze ombré mane that hung down her back—was attractive in a generic way and utterly forgettable. It was a spell she’d perfected as a teenager when she’d needed an alter ego to channel the impulses of youth she hadn’t known how to deal with. Even in adulthood, however, it had its uses.
The bartenders at Bitters knew her as Kylie when she came in with this face—she’d been on the prowl enough that the bartenders knew her by name. And knew her drink, Balcones, which arrived almost as soon as she sat at the bar.
Ione set her motorcycle helmet on the stool beside her. It kept guys from hitting on her unless she wanted them to. Sitting at the end of the bar took care of the other side. She could have used a repelling spell, but too much magic in one night made her feel even worse than drinking too much.
“Is that your Nighthawk outside?” The cultured, Hugh Grant–esque British accent sent a tingling vibration through her that completely missed her spine and went straight for the genitals. God, was she really this hard up that a fancy accent was all it took?
Maintaining cool disinterest in the man standing beside her helmet’s stool, Ione took a sip of her drink before turning her head slightly in his direction. Giving him the once-over out of the corner of her eye did nothing to dispel the disconcerting vibration. A pair of golden-brown eyes to match her glass of Balcones looked back at her, pieces of tiger’s-eye quartz rimmed in dark lashes against the warm teakwood hue of his skin. Thick black hair, impeccably styled, with a charming streak of gray at the temples, completed the picture. And the expensive suit said business tourist—but the kind of business that didn’t require sitting behind a desk in an office.
She was a sucker for a sharp-dressed man. And a posh accent, apparently. But ogling hot guys in expensive suits wasn’t what she was here for. She tried to assess whether he could be part of the network of what one of Phoebe’s clients in the Public Defender’s Office had referred to as “a bunch of power-tripping dicks.”
Ione realized he was waiting for her answer. “Maybe.”
“Sorry, that wasn’t a line.” He leaned against the bar as if he had no intention of moving on and gave her a crooked smile that made the tiger’s eyes shimmer. “I just haven’t seen one of those in a while. You’ve kept it in excellent shape.”
Ione gave him a dismissive shrug. “You never know what’s under the chassis. Maybe I just keep it looking pretty and ride it into the ground.” She went back to her drink, deciding he seemed a bit too straitlaced to fit the profile she was looking for, but he didn’t take the hint.
“I doubt that. The bike shows signs of being well loved.” He moved to the open seat beside the helmet and ordered a beer.
“Do you ride?” Ione hadn’t intended to talk to him, but her vibrating pussy apparently had a different agenda.
He shook his head. “I’ve ridden on the back of a friend’s bike, but my parents would never let me ride myself.”
The corner of Ione’s mouth twitched. “You live with your parents?”
“What?” Her companion choked a bit on his beer and set the bottle down. “Oh. No, no. You’ve misunderstood me. I meant growing up. Of course, even now, my mum would probably kill me before I could get myself killed on one if I even so much as...” His voice trailed off and he looked chagrined. “I just made it worse, didn’t I? Let me try this again. I’m Dev.” He held out his hand and Ione stared at it for a moment before he let it fall. “I’m just in town for a few days. Don’t really know anyone here—and I am really sounding like an arse.”
A little smile slipped out before she caught herself.
The bartender threw Dev a challenging look. “This guy bothering you, Kylie?”
Ione shrugged. “Nah, he’s fine. Thanks, Gus. I think maybe he just needs something a little...stiffer.” She tipped her glass toward him. “Get him one of these.”
“I’m really quite fine with the beer, actually.”
“Are you?” Ione looked him up and down. “Quite?”
His dark brows drew together. “Sorry...are you making fun of my speech?”
“Absolutely not. There is absolutely nothing funny about your speech.”
Gus brought the Balcones and Dev started to object, but Ione interrupted. “It’s on me.”
With a shrug, Dev lifted his glass to Ione and nodded before taking a drink. “So, do you come here often?” He grimaced as the words left his mouth. “God, that sounded like another line. I mean a line. The first one wasn’t a line. Neither was this—I mean...there were no lines. Oh, hell.” He concentrated on the drink and Ione laughed and shook her head. “What I meant,” said Dev, “was that it seems you come here often enough for the bartender to know you.” He paused for a moment as if he’d just heard himself and rolled his eyes. “I seem to be determined to keep digging this hole deeper.” Downing his drink, he slipped off the stool and straightened his suit. “It was lovely meeting you, Kylie. Thank you so much for the beverage.”
Ione strangled the urge to laugh at the word “beverage.” “You don’t get out much, do you?”
Dev paused in the act of turning away. “Sorry, do you mean me?”
She threw him a sidelong glance. “I’m pretty sure Gus’s job gives him plenty of opportunities to hit on women. So, yes, I meant you.”
The warm hue of his skin became even warmer. “I really wasn’t hitting on you—”
Ione turned on her stool and leaned back with her elbows propped against the bar. “My God, you’re adorably awkward—Dev, was it? Do they make them all like you across the pond?”
She seemed to have rendered him speechless.
Dev glanced around as if trying to find the actual person she was talking to before laughing at himself and shaking his head, the tension of his stiff posture finally easing. “I don’t think they make any more like me anywhere, thankfully. I am rather dreadful at this, aren’t I?”
Ione gave him a wry smile. “So you admit you were hitting on me.”
Dev looked down at his feet with a smile, rubbing the back of his neck. “I might have done. Just a bit.” That little vibration inside her began to quiver once more, like a tuning fork buzzing with a faint, pleasant note.
Ione swiveled around toward the bar and raised a finger as Gus glanced in her direction from the other end where he was ringing someone up. “One more over here, Gus, when you get the chance.” She looked back at Dev, still standing there regarding her with a quizzical smile. Those eyes were really unfair. No one needed eyes that incredible. “Well? You in?”
Dev eased himself back onto the stool and smoothed back the gray curls at his temples with a grin. “I’m not sure what I’m in for, precisely, but I believe that I am, in fact, ‘in.’”
Ione finished off her Balcones. “The ride, of course.”
Dev paused with his hand on the glass Gus had set in front of him. “I’m not sure it’s the wisest idea to be riding a motorbike after imbibing alcohol.”
She rolled her eyes and Dev’s cheeks went scarlet. He lowered his head over his drink and paid great attention to it as he sipped. With her elbow on the bar and her chin propped in her hand, Ione studied him. It probably wasn’t the wisest idea to be contemplating what she was contemplating, either. He was not what she was here for. But that vibration was only getting stronger.
She couldn’t take him home, though. She’d nursed her drink over the course of an hour and she had a sobriety elixir that allowed her to ride safely regardless, but she couldn’t exactly explain the elixir to this charming, awkward stranger who had her halfway to climaxing without even touching her. Or even knowing he was doing it. Which was what made her want to get to the other half so damn bad. She had a feeling his witting participation in getting to that goal would be toe-curlingly, ass-numbingly incredible.
“Do you have a car?” She’d blurted the words before her non-lizard brain could stop her. And of course he had a car. Did she think he’d walked all the way here?
Dev wiped sweat from his upper lip with a sensual gesture he probably wasn’t even conscious of as he glanced up at her. “I probably shouldn’t be driving at the moment, either.”
“You’re assuming I’d even let you drive.” Ione picked an ice cube out of her emptied glass and sucked on it. It was now or never. She crunched the ice between her teeth and slipped off the stool, pulling out her wallet to leave Gus a generous tip. “It’s kind of loud in here. I thought we could talk outside.”
She headed for the door without waiting to see what his reaction was. If he didn’t follow, she’d just take the sobriety elixir and get the hell out of there. And if he did, well...
Chapter 2 (#u01760b51-3c5e-5b7c-8c5b-260a9f903794)
Dev twirled his glass in the ring of condensation on the bar, avoiding looking toward the door. He’d behaved recklessly, for reasons he couldn’t explain. Kylie wasn’t even his type. And, type or no type, he didn’t make a habit of hitting on women. As if that hadn’t been painfully obvious. He was here to gather information for his employer, not to snog strangers in pubs.
Although maybe it was a perfectly reasonable response to the pressure he was under. It was his first solo assignment, and if he didn’t get this thing right, he could lose everything he’d worked for. He supposed the inclination to let off a little steam before he got down to business was to be expected. Or maybe he was just letting Kur get to him.
It was the name he’d given the thing that coiled at the base of his brain—or more likely the base of his cock.
Simply put, Kur was a demon. It had been part of Dev since his first disastrous attempt at conjuring. The demon had been caged by Dev’s mentor, the first witch he’d been apprenticed to. Though, Simon, it turned out, had been something more than a witch. By all appearances a kindly white-haired elder, Simon had indulged in arcane arts that would have horrified most conventional practitioners. He’d trusted Dev with his secrets and Dev, in turn, had trusted him implicitly. But dabbling with the dark arcane and believing one could control such forces was a fool’s errand. Simon had lost his life trying to tame Kur—and Dev had lost his soul.
Dev had only been nineteen when the demon had fused with him because of his foolish attempt to call it as Simon lay bleeding from the wounds Kur had inflicted on him. He’d tried to put it back in its cage—and had woken in hospital three days later, his back shredded and his memory of that morning gone. It was only months later that he realized the marks on his back were where the demon had clawed its way in to take up permanent residence inside him.
Dev set down the glass with a decisive thump against the bar. Kur wasn’t in control of him.
He headed out to his rental car, keys in hand. He would politely decline if Kylie was actually out there waiting for him. Which he sincerely doubted she would be. She’d probably just been having a laugh at his expense. Either way, he’d have to take a chance on driving back to the hotel with a couple of drinks under his belt. It was a straight shot down the highway, which had been mostly empty when he’d come this way. And he was fairly certain that if he lingered at the bar any longer to make sure his blood alcohol level was sufficiently lowered, it would end up becoming much higher instead. Kur never let him off that easy.
Outside in the parking lot under the solenoid lamps, the red-leather-clad blonde was leaning against the passenger door—no, the driver’s door—of his rental, arms folded across her chest. She’d unzipped the red coat. Bollocks.
“I’m afraid I need to make an early night of it” was what he’d intended to say as he approached the car. Instead he leaned one shoulder against the door beside her and said, “Hey.”
Kylie gave him a sly smile. “Thought you’d changed your mind.”
“Well, I haven’t really made up my mind—about anything in particular.”
“Haven’t you?” She wasn’t giving an inch, this one.
Dev tried to talk himself out of it. This really was the worst idea. Instead he found he’d leaned closer to her. He contemplated the cherry-bomb red of her lips for a moment before they both moved together in unison, his palm sliding behind her neck and her fingers slipping around his and into the hair at his nape. And then a blazing spark of desire shot up from the base of his spine and skittered along his skin like fire as their lips came together.
Dev rolled across her, his body pressing her into the cold metal, and Kylie moaned into his mouth, making his cock granite, her hands sending shivers through him as they roamed over his back beneath the suit jacket. Those hands were coming dangerously close to the ugly knot of scar tissue above his sacrum, and Dev reached behind his back and grabbed her wrists, pinning them beside her against the car. The aquamarine eyes almost seemed to flash green with warning, and Dev let go as Kylie stiffened against him.
He thought he’d blown it, and he drew back, but her hands had gone to the buckle of his belt, yanking it open, and she’d unzipped his pants before he could recover himself and grab for her hands once more. “We can’t do this here.”
Kylie was breathing hard, her rising chest drawing his gaze to the tight peaks of her nipples beneath the cotton vest. “Then open the door.”
Dev let out a soft groan as she reached into his pocket and pulled out the keys, dangling them in front of him. He hadn’t done it in a car since he was a teenager.
Kylie raised a questioning eyebrow and, when he didn’t object, hit the unlock button on the fob and climbed into the backseat.
Some small part of him was still trying to be rational, but the leather hugging that perfect arse smothered the last of his rational thought. Kylie turned and pulled him inside, and Dev felt light-headed and intoxicated as he fell against her, but it had nothing to do with the alcohol he’d drunk. There was something about her skin against his that seemed to send little electric shocks along the surface, further incensing his baser impulses. Her hands were at his fly once more, and Dev groaned more loudly as she slipped in her hand and took hold of him, wrapping her fingers around the almost painful heat of his shaft.
He lowered his mouth to her breast, sucking the hard nipple right through the fabric, and Kylie breathed in sharply, her hand tightening on his cock, letting her breath out in a soft, plaintive moan. After sliding the strap of the shirt down her arm until he’d drawn the collar below her breast, Dev closed his mouth once more over the black lace of the bra and sucked her in, thrusting involuntarily into her hand at the taste of her skin through the rough lace. Kylie’s legs wrapped around his hips as she moaned and squirmed, pressing herself up into his mouth, her tight grip sliding against the head of his cock.
Dev groaned, rocking into her hand. The damn bra had to go. He prodded at the lace, higher brain function completely gone, and tore it open, freeing the sodden nipple so he could get his mouth around it without interference. The high-pitched noise Kylie made, along with the rapid motions of her hand, brought him dangerously close to the edge.
He put a hand on her wrist, pulling his mouth from her breast with a slick pop. “You have to stop,” he gasped. “I’m going to come.”
Kylie’s fingers unclenched. “Have you got a condom?”
“Condom?” Dev tried to make his brain work. “I don’t think so.” He needed his mouth on her skin.
Kylie made a growling noise of frustration in her throat. Tightening her legs around his hips, she swiveled suddenly, flipping him onto his back on the seat cushion.
Dev reached for her damp nipple, but she shoved him back and shimmied downward, swallowing his cock before he could do more than groan in surprise. Surprise was quickly supplanted by even deeper groans of pleasure as he rocked into her mouth, feeling the slippery heat of her lips and tongue sliding over him, and he came swiftly, gripping the seatback beside him with a shout as she swallowed it all.
As he lay back, his entire body going limp with release, Kylie zipped up her jacket, swinging her feet through the door he realized he hadn’t even latched, and climbed out.
Dev struggled to sit up, hampered by his state of undress and the fuzzy post-ejaculatory brain cloud. “Kylie?” The door swung shut. Dev scrambled to put himself together and crawled across the seat to open it just in time to see her fasten her helmet and swing her leg over the Nighthawk, kick-start the engine and drive away.
* * *
Halfway down Highway 89A, Ione realized she hadn’t taken the sobriety elixir. She pulled off to the side of the road and took the little vial out of her pocket, popping the cork and downing it swiftly. As soon as she had, the postmagical hangover kicked in, along with a dose of mortifying reality. Mother of God. Ione groaned into her gloved hands. What had she been thinking? At least he was only passing through and there was no chance she’d run into him again around town. Not that he’d know her if she did, but it would be awkward enough even if she was the only one aware of what they’d done together.
Mortification aside, she was no closer to exposing Carter’s sick friends. If Dev was in town to hook up with a call girl—even one of the nonmetaphysical variety—he hadn’t acted like it. She should have ignored her out-of-control hormones and stuck to the script she’d written for herself, keeping her eye out for one of the club patrons who fit the bill.
She shook off the glamour as soon as she got home, anxious to get out of her sweaty clothes and into a hot bath. Undressing while the tub filled, she paused for a moment at the sight of the ruined bra in the mirror as she drew the top over her head. The memory of how it had gotten that way sent that frisson of vibration through her once more. The touch of his mouth on hers had been like a narcotic rush, but when she’d felt his tongue on her breast, she’d nearly climaxed. And, God, what a climax that would have been. She could feel it just out of reach even now and she moaned involuntarily.
Ione touched her fingertips to her lipstick-smeared lips. She wasn’t used to seeing herself like this. Usually she cleaned up before dismissing the glamour, because it was a bit unsettling to see the remnants of another face on her actual face. It was dishonest and a sort of dissociative game she wasn’t proud of, but it was a defense mechanism she’d learned long before she’d started hunting Carter’s accomplices. Sometimes she needed the freedom to be someone else. Because Ione Carlisle did not behave like this. Couldn’t behave like this. She had to keep things together. So she’d split herself apart.
After washing off the makeup, she tossed the bra in the trash with a little growl of disappointment. It had been her favorite. Do not think about how it got that way again. But she was already thinking it as she wound her hair up into a loose bun and stepped into the fragrant, foaming bath. The water was a bit too hot, but the sting of it felt good. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the built-in headrest, Dev’s charming accent murmuring in her head. Her fingers slipped down between her legs and she indulged in a little mental replay, the stroke of her own hand making up for what he’d neglected, while hot water and patchouli-rose bubbles sloshed against her nipples as a stand-in for Dev’s sensuous mouth.
The climax made her cry out and she nearly swallowed a mouthful of bathwater and bubble bath as she slipped down the edge of the tub with the release of the tension she’d been holding in her legs. Not nearly as satisfying as actually having that sweet cock inside her, but still one heck of an orgasm.
Ione opened her eyes with a sigh and made a mental note to always carry her own condoms when she went out on a glamour bender. Even if she wasn’t planning on having sex, it was only smart.
The bath and the orgasm had made her nicely sleepy, and Ione fell into bed later without bothering to dress, snuggling under the down comforter while the light patter of autumn rain played against the roof. She fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow and, for the first time in weeks, managed not to have a single nightmare about Carter Hamilton.
Chapter 3 (#u01760b51-3c5e-5b7c-8c5b-260a9f903794)
The chime of her calendar notification in the morning reminding her of the Covent summonses brought her temporarily forgotten troubles crashing back. Time to face the music.
She tried to tell herself she was just being paranoid as she stroked her razor over her legs a bit aggressively as a proxy for the source of her frustration. Though it wasn’t really paranoia when a necromancer had gone to such elaborate lengths to inveigle his way into the Covent’s midst. Carter had spent years on his deception, becoming a respected member of the Phoenix branch of the Covent. He’d come to Sedona as part of a convention of the Regional Conclave to deal with the sudden rash of lingering shades of the recent dead in the area—shades, it turned out, that Carter himself had been trapping here.
Ione let out a sharp exclamation as the razor bit into the tender flesh at her ankle. Blood dripped onto the white marble tile like garnet beads scattering from a broken rosary—blood from the veins of a demon.
That was the crux of it. Carter had targeted her because of something she hadn’t even known she possessed. She had been the last to know and the last to believe that she was a descendant of the most ancient of demons. She was a daughter of Lilith. And the Lilith blood was what Carter had coveted, the magic ingredient that would give him the power to command the dead. Phoebe had been his ultimate target, but he’d used Ione to set her up.
Despite the way they’d found out about it, Phoebe had seemed to take the news of their heritage in stride. Unlike Ione, she hadn’t spent years struggling to reconcile the practice of magic with a belief in God. But everything was easy for Phoebe. She’d walked away from the church and embraced her gift years ago without a backward glance. If you could call being a way station for the recently deceased a gift.
Ione touched her finger to one of the drops of blood on her ankle, holding the tiny red orb on her fingertip under the cool white glow of the LED bulbs around the mirror. She concentrated on the drop until nothing else existed, the convex surface glistening like a miniature crystal ball in crimson in which her reflection was inverted. An angel on the head of a pin. Or a demon.
With a murmured incantation, she set the ruby bead floating above her fingertip. It was a simple trick, one of the first she’d learned. A trick for slumber parties when she was a girl. Light as a feather, stiff as a board. She’d thought then it was her own affinity for magic that had made it come so easily to her. It was because of that affinity that she’d started on the path that had led her to the Covent.
She’d come to believe in magic as a gift, and an art to be learned, not some kind of transgressive aberration. But this tainted blood was where her magical aptitude had come from, not hours of practice and months of apprenticeship; not innate talent. Not a gift from God.
Even so, it had allowed her to do what she loved. And if the Covent was going to take that away from her, she intended to walk into the temple as Ione Carlisle, high priestess of the Sedona Coventry, with her head held high.
She dressed in a crisp, white blouse and slim-cut black pants fresh from the dry cleaner’s, topped with a black, flared, knee-length frock coat with delicate gray pinstripes. Presenting a confident, authoritative air was crucial in maintaining the respect of her coven, and Ione never left the house without making sure she was representing the office of high priestess with the utmost solemnity—when she left in her own face, at any rate. A light layer of foundation, a pale smudge of blush, a swipe of mascara across her bottom lashes and a dab of clear, matte gloss across her lips conveyed both professionalism and a certain understated grace.
* * *
The parking lot of Covent Temple was full when she arrived. As Calvin had implied, every member of the Sedona Coventry must have received a summons. Yet the Covent hadn’t seen fit to inform their high priestess. Tears slammed against the backs of her eyes as she paused inside the atrium, and she dug her fingernails into her palms to keep them from going any farther. This was it. She was going to lose everything. Carter Hamilton had kneecapped her from behind bars without even trying.
Ione deepened her breath and exhaled the frailty of ego. She’d been elected to serve the needs of the magical community, not as some kind of merit badge or status symbol. If what the coven needed to heal from Carter’s betrayal was for Ione to step down as high priestess, she would do it graciously. Even if it meant collapsing into a quivering heap on her bathroom floor when she got home and sobbing until she was sick. And then picking herself up and getting a job in the real world.
When she entered the temple, the rest of the coven members were seated on the comfortable benches that lined the aisles. The temple had been built with much the same design as a Catholic church—the Covent’s origins steeped in the religion from which it had emerged—but its pews were for comfort not worship. So maybe this wasn’t a ritual defrocking, after all; if they meant to perform any kind of ceremony, they’d be gathered in a formal circle at the altar.
All eyes turned to her as she came up the aisle—including a pair that were a glittering tiger’s-eye golden brown.
Ione stopped still, blood rushing to her cheeks as well as to other more inconvenient and intimate places. It was impossible, but there he was, seated among them, just a little apart from the rest: last night’s epic bad judgment. When he rose, the others rose with him.
The golden-brown eyes widened slightly at the sight of her, and she was certain for a mortifying instant that he’d somehow seen through the glamour last night. He knew exactly who she was. But the expression was gone just as quickly with no hint of recognition in his eyes, only grim determination.
“Dione Carlisle?” He’d pronounced her given name as “Dee-ohn”—which was the reason she’d changed it.
She willed herself to behave like someone who hadn’t just run smack into the man she’d sucked off in a parking lot the night before while wearing another woman’s face. “I go by Ione, actually. But I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” Her cheeks throbbed at the unfortunate word choice, and he studied her with a peculiar expression.
With a slight, formal bow, he held out his hand. “Dharamdev Gideon. The Leadership Council sent me.” Ione’s heart sank. So this was her replacement, after all.
His skin tingled with magical energy as she shook his hand. She should have recognized it last night, the vibrational hum his proximity—and his touch—had set off inside her. It was magic—ordinary magical ability and not the pulsing tremor of some karmic sexual connection. She tried to ignore how the warm vibration of his skin touched off that answering warmth inside her that was decidedly more carnal than spiritual. And to ignore the enticing scent of his skin.
Realizing she’d held his hand a moment longer than necessary, Ione released it.
His expression masked, Dev clasped his hands behind his back, his deep-charcoal suit obviously tailored, as it accommodated his movements with perfect ease. “I’m the Covent assayer. I assume they told you I was coming.”
Ione tried to make sense of the words. She’d thought for sure he was the new interim high priest. But maybe he was just some kind of number-cruncher or efficiency expert. Maybe the world wasn’t ending.
“No, I’m afraid they didn’t, Mr. Gideon. Assayer...what is that, exactly?”
Dev cleared his throat and drew himself up tall as he straightened his raw silk tie in dark teal, his face expressing disapproval—and a touch of what looked suspiciously like disgust. “The Covent seeks to determine what role you may have played in the infiltration of the necromancer Carter Hamilton. I’m here to evaluate your failure of leadership, Miss Carlisle, and to decide on an appropriate punishment.” His cheeks seemed to color, but only for an instant. “Penalty.”
The furious heat in Ione’s cheeks was undoubtedly far more obvious. The Covent leaders apparently intended to treat her like a naughty child. The sense of resignation and grief at what she’d believed she was about to lose was quickly giving way to umbrage.
“I see.” Ione put her hands in the pockets of her coat to keep the angry tremble from showing. “I take it my account of the events is in question. I suppose that’s not entirely a surprise, given that none of the Council members was here to witness what happened. But the police accepted my account, Mr. Gideon. And Mr. Hamilton himself confessed that he alone was responsible for his actions. I’m sure any of the members of my coven can tell you what an act he put on, how he fooled us all.”
She glanced at her fellow coven members to be sure they were still on her side. A few looked embarrassed but no one was avoiding her gaze.
“I’m not proud of being fooled, and I’ll accept whatever censure the Covent deems fit to mete out for that failing, but I can assure you, Mr. Gideon, that I did nothing unethical.”
Dev gave her a condescending smile. “I will, of course, be interviewing every member of the coven at length. But by your own account, your actions were anything but ethical. You used unauthorized magical influence on a Covent member—”
“A Covent member who happened to be a necromancer, Mr. Gideon. Who was in the act of attempting to murder my sister and another member of my coven.”
“Unauthorized influence.” The gemstone eyes seemed to crackle with intensity. “There are no exceptions to this rule. Rafael Diamante subdued him with the very necromancy of which you’ve accused Hamilton, and it appears from your account that you helped Diamante do it.”
Ione’s mouth dropped open and she had to work to get her jaw to function normally. And to respond without screaming. “You’re not actually suggesting Carter Hamilton is innocent?”
“I’m not suggesting anything, Miss Carlisle. I’m merely explaining to you, since you seem to be having difficulty with the concept, that you took actions that are greatly frowned upon by the Covent. And a full investigation is more than warranted to determine exactly what happened here and who is culpable.” Whatever trick of the light had made him seem so damnably attractive a moment before, his smug condescension had managed to shake Ione loose of it. Now he just looked like a pompous jerk.
He glanced around at the others as if just remembering their presence and let out a sigh. “I trust that you’ll all cooperate fully with my investigation. I’d like to begin with brief, preliminary interviews with each of you, no more than ten or fifteen minutes, before Miss Carlisle and I sit down to discuss her account at length.” Dev turned back to Ione. “I hadn’t expected you to attend this preliminary session.” His frown expressed disapproval of whoever had leaked the news. “Since I may be a few hours, it might be best if you leave and return later.” He took out his phone, poised to make an entry. “If you’d give me your mobile number, I’ll call you when the interviews are completed.”
“I don’t have a ‘mobile’ number.” She couldn’t help echoing his British pronunciation. Ione fixed her gaze on him as he looked up, daring him to mock her for being a Luddite. She actually did have a cell phone—for emergencies—but she was rather proud of the fact that she hadn’t succumbed to the pressure to carry the phone about with her. “I don’t need to reach anyone that urgently and anyone who needs me knows to reach me at my home number.”
She took a book from her bag and turned to take a seat beneath one of the stained-glass windows. “I’ll just sit and read while I wait.” The glass depicted the tongue-thrusting goddess Kali. Ione hadn’t chosen it on accident.
“Miss Carlisle.” Dev hadn’t moved, his brows drawn together in consternation when she glanced up from her bench. “I’d prefer not to have any...undue influence on the accounts of the others.”
Ione glared daggers of ice at him. “I beg your pardon?”
Dev seemed to blanch as if only now aware of his choice of words. “I mean, it would be better if none of the coven members were to discuss their versions of the events with you prior to our interviews.”
She let out an astonished and offended laugh. “You think I’m going to coach them, Mr. Gideon? You don’t know a thing about me or my coven if you imagine for one moment that I’d tell anyone here to lie for me—or that any of them would.”
Chatoyant eyes glittered dangerously in the candlelight. “Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? I don’t know anything about you or your coven. That’s what I’m here to assess. There’s a process and protocol that must be followed.”
Ione shrugged and opened her book. “Then follow it. I pledge a solemn oath before Kali beside me, Mr. Gideon, that I will sit here quietly and read and not ‘influence’ anyone in any way.”
He was still staring at her. She could feel the indignation radiating from him in waves as she continued to ignore him until he finally sighed his disapproval and gestured to one of the coven members to accompany him to the vestry behind the altar.
Self-satisfied prick didn’t know whom he was dealing with. She’d sit here all day if she felt like it—even if he didn’t deign to talk to her at all.
A beam of sunlight through the window dappled the pages of her book with vivid reds and golds. Not the best reading light, but she was reading the same four or five words over and over again anyway, unable to make English out of them, her heart still pounding with anger—and more than a little anxiety.
“Is this seat taken?”
Ione glanced up to find the newest member of the coven smiling at her. Fresh and eager, Margot had apprenticed to an elderly member who’d decided to retire a few months ago. Ione hadn’t gotten to know her yet. Not that Ione ever really got to know anyone. Once she’d been anointed as high priestess, it seemed wiser to keep her personal and coven lives separate. As the disaster of dating Carter had proved.
Ione smiled back, grateful for the overture. “It isn’t, but aren’t you afraid I’ll accidentally influence you?”
Margot sat beside her, crossing her ankles beneath a pair of multicolored paisley leggings peeking through a sheer black skirt. Her relaxed, fun sense of personal style was the polar opposite of Ione’s carefully conservative attire. Besides the responsibility of representing the coven as its high priestess, Ione had always feared being judged as perpetuating some kind of metaphysical trend. Sedona had a reputation for being a little out there, and, while many of the merchants were perfectly genuine, some of the more touristy businesses exploited that reputation for maximum effect.
Margot crossed her arms over her ample bosom. “Don’t worry about Chauncey in there. Maybe he just can’t let go of that stick up his butt because it’s so damn tight.” She grinned as Ione nearly strangled on the startled burst of laughter she was trying to suppress. “Man, you didn’t see that thing walking away, did you?” Margot fanned herself. “Kinda makes you wish we could bring back the Great Rite.”
Now that was something Ione didn’t need to be thinking about. The image of rolling about on the floor in front of the altar with a stripped-down Dev Gideon was a little more than she could handle. Not that the Great Rite was really about rolling around on the floor having an uninhibited orgy, per se—God, she really needed to get laid more often. Ione shuddered, realizing the last time had been with Carter. And she did not find Dev Gideon attractive, she reminded herself. His personality had ruined it.
“And speaking of Rafe Diamante...” Margot winked. “How’s your sister Phoebe doing?”
Ione couldn’t hold back the laugh this time. “Yeah, my little sister pretty much hit the jackpot with that one, didn’t she?”
“Not that I was trying to get into that boy’s pants or anything, but I know quite a few women who are quietly weeping about not getting into those pants.” Margot shook her head ruefully. “All joking aside, do you think he’ll be coming back to the Covent?”
Ione closed her book. “No, I think he’s had enough of organized practice.” She was careful not to mention that, thanks to Phoebe’s demon blood awakening his inner Quetzalcoatl, Rafe now had a tendency to sprout wings and get a bit scaly when he practiced ritual. Not that Phoebe seemed to mind that this, apparently, also included the raising of sexual energy.
Ione knew just a little too much about her sister’s sex life these days. Not so much because they’d gotten particularly closer since the Carter incident, but mostly because the twins were busybodies and couldn’t resist sharing juicy tidbits with Ione after calling Phoebe to pester her for details. To hear Rhea and Theia tell it, Phoebe hadn’t left her house in weeks—because she was having trouble walking.
“Well, if you talk to him, let him know we all miss him. And not just because of his pants.” Margot smiled, putting a hand on Ione’s shoulder. “And, seriously, don’t worry about this investigation. We all know you didn’t do anything wrong. We’ve got your back.”
“Thanks.” Unexpectedly, Ione had to work not to tear up. It was nice to have a vote of confidence. “That means more than you know.”
She felt Dev’s approach without looking up, as haughty, self-righteous energy filled the aisle of the nave. “I thought you were going to read quietly, Miss Carlisle.”
Margot jumped up. “Sorry. My fault. I was getting a little antsy sitting around. But don’t worry. I didn’t let her give me the whammy.”
Ione choked back another laugh and had to pretend to be focusing on her book once more, unable to look either of them in the eye.
Dev tried to vibe her with a folded-arm stance of paternal disapproval that she pretended not to see from the corner of her eye until he gave up. “And what is your name, Miss...?”
“Margot Kelley.”
“Miss Kelley, why don’t you accompany me to the vestry and we’ll have a little chat.”
Ione rolled her eyes. What was he, a headmaster in his day job?
The first interviewee, Calvin, passed her with a nod and an encouraging smile on the way out. That was two votes of confidence, anyway.
As she started to make an actual effort to put the proceedings out of her mind and read her book, a strangled cry of alarm came from the antechamber, and Calvin came stumbling back inside.
Ione was on her feet in an instant. “Calvin? What is it? What happened?” She stepped into the aisle and put an arm around his shuddering shoulders.
“On the door,” he choked out, looking ill.
Dev Gideon had come swiftly at the noise and he marched past them with determined steps, Margot following, bemused. Calvin had sunk onto one of the benches, too horrified by whatever he’d seen to articulate it.
Ione started toward the doors just as Margot hurried back inside. “What is it? What’s going on?”
“You don’t want to see it.” Margot shuddered, blinking back tears. “Somebody—some sicko nailed a dead cat to the door.”
Chapter 4 (#u01760b51-3c5e-5b7c-8c5b-260a9f903794)
She was still high priestess of this coven, and it was her duty to protect it. Ione squeezed Margot’s hand before ignoring her advice and heading into the atrium. Dev stood in the doorway, his body framed in sunlight, looking down at the paper in his hand.
He turned as Ione neared the door and shook his head. “There’s no need to look. Someone was obviously going for shock value, and we don’t all need nightmares.”
“This is my coven, Mr. Gideon, and I’m not some delicate flower.”
Dev caught her arm as she tried to pass him and the surge of vibrational energy struck her once more—not sexual this time, thank heaven, but a powerful bolt like a warning that stopped her in her tracks.
“Let go of me.”
“Sorry.” Dev released her, looking shaken. “I’m just trying to spare you any more trauma than is necessary.”
“Necessary?” Exactly what kind of trauma would be necessary?
Dev held out the note. “I believe you were the target of this little act of terrorism.”
Ione took it, unable to resist one last glance beyond him to the mangled thing that lay on the stone walkway. She looked swiftly away. Maybe he was right about this. Whatever the aim, she had no doubt this was an escalation of the message that had been intended with the dead birds left on her porch every morning for the past week. She’d been so focused on the summonses she hadn’t even noticed the absence of this morning’s “gift.”
Her head swam as she tried to concentrate on the words written on a piece of parchment in the careful, talented hand of a calligrapher—in what appeared to be blood.
“It’s ink.” Dev guessed at her assumption. “They obviously wanted it to look like blood, but it’s ink.”
Ione breathed a little more easily and read the note aloud. “‘Out of love for the truth and from desire to elucidate it, I, Nemesis, intend to defend the following statements.’” She glanced up at Dev. “This nut is doing Martin Luther’s 95 Theses?”
Dev nodded grimly. “Just ten, but they’re what I believe Americans would call ‘doozies.’”
Ione continued. “‘One. When the Covent was established in the Canton du Valais in the Swiss Confederation in 1533, its aim was to illuminate the arcane as a complement to the glory of God, not to profane it.
“‘Two. The practice of the Sacred Craft within the tenets of the Covent is the antithesis of the practice of evil.
“‘Three. The thirteen founding families believed in purity of heart, purity of mind, purity of body, and purity of soul.
“‘Four. There is therefore no place in the Covent for those who harbor evil within them.
“‘Five. The high priestess of this coven has brought the stain of impure blood onto this body.’”
Ione’s voice trailed off. The remaining theses were more than she could bring herself to read aloud.
6. High Priestess Ione Carlisle, being of one of the venerable Covent families, has hidden the shameful secret that kept the Carlisle family from the ranks of the Covent for nearly four centuries: that she is of the blood of the accursed demoness Lilith.
7. Impure blood cannot be tolerated, and the body of the Covent must be cleansed.
8. Let her who pollutes the purity of the Covent be anathema and accursed.
9. To allow Ione Carlisle to continue as the high priestess of the Sedona Coventry is an act of heresy against the Covent.
The parchment shook in Ione’s hands.
10. She who brings evil into the halls of the Covent shall be admitted only into the halls of death and hell.
Dev quietly took it from her. “The writer of these words is obviously mentally unhinged, and the Covent doesn’t tolerate such harassment. But you’ll forgive me if I ask...is there any truth to the accusation?”
Glancing up, expecting judgment and derision in his eyes, Ione was surprised to see compassion and concern instead. “That I carry the blood of a demon in my veins?” The weight of every self-recriminatory thought she’d been having for weeks pressed down on her. Every fear she’d had of losing everything was coming true. And she deserved it. She was tainted. “If my sister Theia’s research is to be believed, I’m afraid the answer is yes.”
She felt deflated and empty after holding the secret inside for so long. Spoken aloud, it seemed commonplace, something that couldn’t possibly mean the end of everything she’d known. But it was.
Ione drew back her shoulders. “I’ll save you the time and bother, Mr. Gideon. I just need to collect a few things before I go. If you want to have someone accompany me to make sure I’m not stealing any Covent property, I’ll understand.”
“Collect a few things?” Dev frowned. “Where are you going?”
Ione wrinkled her nose at him. “I—home, Mr. Gideon. I’d rather go quietly without a public spectacle. My coven deserves better, even if I don’t.”
Dev lifted an eyebrow. “Miss Carlisle, you seem to be operating under the misapprehension that I endorse the agenda of this deranged person or persons calling themselves Nemesis and defiling the sacred grounds of this temple. I have no intention of asking you to step down. Not for this.
“Depending on the outcome of my investigation, once concluded, if my recommendations to the Covent administration include electing a new high priest or priestess, it will be because of your involvement with the necromancer. Not because of some antiquated notion of impure blood.”
Where had the smug prick gone? Was he actually being nice?
“I’m confused. What this ‘Nemesis’ nut says is true—my ancestor was found guilty of having demon blood, and when a member of my family was discovered to have married one of her descendants, the Carlisles were expelled from the Covent. Doesn’t the Covent frown on dark magic?”
Dev’s eyes were piercing. “Do you practice dark magic?”
“If you’re asking about necromancy, of course not. But my affinity for magic clearly isn’t born of goodness and light. It’s...demonic.” The word felt bitter on her tongue.
“There’s a world of difference between demon ancestry and what modern religion defines as demonic. It so happens that demonology was my area of focus at university. What we call a ‘demon’ these days is more accurately a malevolent energy. Anyone can cultivate such negative energy. One doesn’t have to be ‘possessed’ by some ancient spirit. In fact, it’s rather racist to suggest that what’s in a person’s blood should make them inherently evil, don’t you think?”
“I...hadn’t given it much thought.” She’d given it a lot of thought, actually. She’d thought of nothing else since Theia and Rhea had broken the news to her. But the way Dev was looking at her with those luminous eyes was making her feel as though she’d said something inappropriate and offensive.
“Don’t get me wrong, Miss Carlisle. There may still be consequences for withholding this information from the Covent leadership. I am obligated to report it, after all. The Leadership Council may not all be quite as enlightened on the subject, and not disclosing this information when you learned of it may be viewed as a breach of faith.” He carefully rolled up the parchment and made a gesture toward the remains. “Look, why don’t I clean this up? And then you and I can talk at length—if you don’t mind sticking around for a bit. I can interview the rest of the coven members at another time.”
This was exactly the opposite of the reaction she’d expected from him. A few minutes ago he’d all but accused her of making up the accusations of necromancy against Carter and practicing it herself. And now he was trying to reassure her that her demon blood didn’t make her evil?
Dev glanced around. “Do you keep any rubbish bags on the premises? Preferably dark, heavy-duty? I’d rather not carry that about in something transparent and have the others seeing it.”
Ione studied him and nodded with an intake of breath. “I think there are some gardening supplies in the basement.” Though she didn’t exactly relish going down there. It was where one of Carter’s victims had been stowed, and the smell had been impossible to get out completely no matter how much ventilation they’d given it. “I’ll have someone go downstairs and scare something up.”
Her conscience needled her for being a coward, but Margot was waiting inside the atrium, eager to do something to help. Ione sent her down to get the bags before reassuring the others that someone had just pulled a rather nasty prank and it was being taken care of.
On the bench farthest from the doors, Calvin sat, looking gray. Ione popped into the back office to get him a bottle of water and returned to slip onto the bench beside him.
“Hey.” She handed him the water. “Mr. Gideon’s going to clean up and then the rest of you can go home. Are you okay to drive or do you want someone to give you a ride?”
Calvin took the water gratefully and shook his head as he took a sip. “I can manage. I just...don’t want to see that again, you know?”
“I know. I’m sorry you had to be the one to find it.”
“Do you think it’s...was it the necromancer?”
“Carter Hamilton?” Ione shook her head decisively. “He’s behind bars and he’s been stripped of his power. He can’t do anything to hurt us. This is just some disturbed individual who’s focused on me because of everything that’s happened. Just trying to rattle me.”
Calvin huffed. “Well, it sure as hell rattled me.” He glanced up at her, brow wrinkled with concern beneath his receding hairline. “About that night—you needed our help—Rafe needed our help—and the coven let you both down.”
Ione squeezed his forearm. “You couldn’t have known how far gone Hamilton was. None of us knew. It all turned out all right in the end, anyway, so please don’t give it another moment’s thought.”
“But we’re not going to let you down again. I just wanted you to know that. We’re all standing with you.”
Ione smiled. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Dev returned from washing his hands and dismissed the others, promising to contact them for their interviews at a later time. With the temple empty except for the two of them, there was no more putting off a one-on-one discussion.
But for the love of all that’s holy, do not think about your last one-on-one.
* * *
From the moment Ione Carlisle entered the temple, Dev had felt the ground wobbling beneath him, refusing to stabilize, as if some kind of psychic fracking operation had disrupted his equilibrium. There was something painfully familiar about her, like someone he’d met in a dream or another life, his mythical counterpart split off by a vengeful Zeus. Which was preposterous. At best, she had to be grossly incompetent as a high priestess and, at worst, she was in league with a necromancer and guilty of malfeasance. Never mind the fact that he didn’t believe in such nonsense as soul mates.
Her eyes, a grayish green, like the color of lichen or pale jade, were the most uncannily familiar part of her. When they fixed on him, he felt as if he had something on the tip of his tongue he meant to say but couldn’t quite recall it. And worse, Kur seemed to stir inside him at the sight of her as if he knew her.
“Have a seat, Miss Carlisle.” Dev sat behind the desk he realized was most likely her own, but it was important to maintain the symbolic position of authority. He couldn’t very well take her to task from the guest chair while she sat behind the large oak desk herself.
She took the empty chair without any sign of resentment. “Ms.”
“Sorry?”
“Ms. Carlisle. You keep calling me ‘miss.’ That’s considered a bit sexist and archaic here.”
“Oh. I beg your pardon. Ms. Carlisle—”
“And, frankly, that seems unnecessarily formal. Just call me Ione.”
He chose to ignore the fact that this pleased him unreasonably. “I am here in a formal capacity, but as you wish. Ione. Now that the others are gone, I wanted to get your thoughts on who amongst your coven might have reason for any kind of resentment or grudge against you.”
Her perfectly sculpted brows drew together in disapproval as she uncrossed and recrossed her legs. “Among my coven? You think one of them did that? Absolutely not. Even if they did have a grudge against me, none of them would do anything like that. I know them. It’s impossible.”
“The cat wasn’t killed by whoever put it there. At least, not directly. It was road kill, and a day or two old by the look of it.” Not to mention the smell.
“I don’t care. None of them did this.”
Dev clasped his hands on the desk. “Do any of them know of your ancestry?”
She shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of.”
“Who does?”
“My sisters. Rafe Diamante...” She paused, coloring. “And Carter Hamilton.”
“You shared that with him?”
Ione’s mouth was set in a hard line. Foolishly, he regretted being the one to provoke such displeasure on that otherwise lovely mouth.
“Shared it? I used it against him, Mr. Gideon. It’s how we managed to bind him.”
Dev hadn’t heard this detail before. “How do you mean?”
“As my report states, I tried to gather a quorum of coven members to perform the necessary ritual, but without proof of Hamilton’s necromancy, they were reluctant to interfere, particularly on the word of an outsider and in defense of a warlock.”
He nodded impatiently. “So you helped Mr. Diamante use his necromantic abilities against Mr. Hamilton. I’ve read all this.”
Her green eyes darkened. “We did not use necromancy. If you repeat that slander one more time, Mr. Gideon, I may be sorely tempted to violate the Covent doctrine against using magic for spite.”
Dev had to work not to smile. Those eyes were really wreaking havoc with his poise. “You may as well call me Dev—in the interest of not being unnecessarily formal. But I suppose I can refrain from making such judgments until my investigation is complete. Please continue.”
Ione’s expression said she thought he was full of shite. “Given that my sister Phoebe’s life hung in the balance, I reluctantly agreed to attempt to share magical energy with my younger sisters, who had just revealed their theory to me about our...enhanced blood. Despite the fact that neither of them is trained in witchcraft, I managed to raise sufficient energy with them to project a binding spell upon Carter Hamilton’s magic from several miles away. We arrived at the Diamante family home just in time to see Rafe recover his nagual from Hamilton as the result of our binding. At which time, a spirit Hamilton had enslaved entered him—of its own accord—and bound him physically, as well.”
“Nagual?” Dev wrote the unfamiliar word on the pad of paper he’d been using for his interviews. “And what is that?”
“I don’t fully understand it myself, but as Rafe explained it, it’s a sort of spirit animal representing the god Quetzalcoatl, whom Rafe claims to be descended from. He can project it outside himself in various forms—or he can take on its form himself.”
Dev glanced up from the notepad. “He transforms physically? Into what?”
Ione shifted in her chair. “He calls himself ‘quetzal.’ He retains a mostly human form, except the tattoo of Quetzalcoatl on his back becomes an extension of him physically.”
“I’m not following you. Quetzalcoatl is represented in Aztec art as a feathered serpent. You’re saying he transforms into a feathered serpent in human form? Exactly how does that work?”
“I haven’t examined him personally. It seemed a bit awkward.”
“Then how do you know he actually did it?”
Ione cleared her throat and shifted her legs again. “Because he had wings. Iridescent blue-green-and-violet-tipped wings with an eight-foot span. Couldn’t really miss them.”
The pen slipped from Dev’s fingers. “That—wasn’t in the report.”
“No.” Ione shrugged—a vulnerable, feminine gesture that Dev found endearing. “It didn’t seem relevant. The facts were that Carter appropriated Rafe’s power through necromancy, my sisters and I bound Carter’s magic and Rafe got the power back. I understand you’re determined to make me out to be the villain of this piece because I was briefly involved with Carter Hamilton, but the fact is that he did what he did on his own and I was just stupid enough to fall for his act.”
There was a weariness in her eyes that couldn’t be faked. He wanted to believe she was telling the truth. But Dev had to be objective. He couldn’t afford to let his basest instincts color his opinions in this investigation. He had a responsibility to the Covent. Several members of the Leadership Council had been against his appointment, and they were watching him like hawks, just waiting for him to screw up. Dev wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction. And he would not be ruled by the demon. Tales of winged reptiles notwithstanding. Though he was going to have to interview this Diamante fellow for more than just his version of the facts of that night.
“I appreciate your candor, Miss—Ms.—Ione. So if I understand correctly, Carter Hamilton was made aware of your unique bloodline because he felt the power you and your sisters were able to project?”
Ione’s gaze slid away from his. “Not exactly. I mean, I’m sure he must have felt it. But evidently he targeted me because he’d researched our family. He knew my sister’s blood would fulfill the requirement necessary to awaken Rafe’s quetzal power so he could steal it from him. He referred to Phoebe as a divine scion, as Rafe himself claims to be. In Carter’s mind, I suppose, Lilith is a goddess and not a demoness.”
Dev inclined his head. “If you subscribe to certain pagan theories and academic speculation, Lilith may be equated with a number of ancient Semitic deities. It’s a matter of perspective, I suppose. One man’s demon is another man’s divine. Or woman’s.” He cleared his throat. “Be that as it may, this additional information about Carter Hamilton is significant. If he has an obsession with your ancestry, I think it’s quite likely he’s behind this morning’s act of terrorism.”
Ione didn’t seem surprised. “You think he’s orchestrating this from behind bars?”
“He seems the obvious suspect and the only one with evident motive to want to harm you. This Nemesis may be an alias he’s using or it could be the alias of someone he’s convinced to act on his behalf. He can’t use magic against you from prison because of the Covent’s binding, but, from what you’ve told me, it seems he’s rather persuasive.”
Ione’s cheeks flushed pink. “Most psychopaths are.”
“Indeed.” Dev made a note to look into how to get a record of Hamilton’s visitors and correspondence. “In the meantime, this seems most likely to be harassment and not a threat. But you should probably take some extra precautions. Perhaps you could stay with one of your sisters for a bit?”
“I’m quite sure I can take care of myself, Mr. Gideon.”
He gave her a wry smile. “Dev.”
Ione’s jade green eyes flickered with an expression he couldn’t interpret. “Dev. I assure you, I’m perfectly capable.”
“I don’t doubt it. As for your ancestry, let me assure you that I haven’t come here to dig up reasons to malign you before the Leadership Council. My job is to determine your fitness to serve as high priestess by assessing the facts of the events surrounding Carter Hamilton’s crimes. I strongly suggest, however, that you tell them before someone else does.”
She nodded stiffly as she rose. “I’ll take that under advisement.”
Dev stood to shake her hand. As before, he felt a bit of a shock jump between her hand and his as their skin touched—just as he’d noticed with Kylie. What was this, some new idiotic tic of the demon’s to prod him into further mischief? Whatever the demon wanted, he would not be a slave to his desires.
“Thank you for cooperating in this matter. I understand that this is all very awkward and unpleasant, but I appreciate your professionalism.” Despite his annoyance with himself at his reaction to her, when Ione withdrew her hand, he felt childishly disappointed at the absence of it.
As she buttoned her coat, something about the motion reminded Dev of the way Kylie had zipped up her leather jacket before riding away last night, leaving him in the backseat of his rental car with his prick out—well satisfied though it may have been.
“I take my position as a high priestess of the Covent extremely seriously,” she was saying.
He was barely listening to her, the prospect of her disappearing into a world he wasn’t familiar with suddenly as frustrating as the disappearance of Kylie. “You said you don’t have a mobile number. How can I reach you if I need to?”
Ione picked up his pen and paper from the desk and wrote a number. “My landline. I have a machine.”
Chapter 5 (#u01760b51-3c5e-5b7c-8c5b-260a9f903794)
The disquieting flicker of energy that emanated from Dev Gideon’s skin hadn’t dissipated until Ione was beyond the temple. There was something odd about a witch who seemed to project a magical aura even when he was simply sitting still. Maybe he was glamoured. It would account for how unfairly attractive he was. But even Carter hadn’t emanated such ceaseless power. Dev was like a live wire emitting a warning hum.
The light was blinking on her answering machine when she arrived upstairs, and her insides gave a stupid little jump of anticipation, as if the message might be from Dev. Why on earth would she care if he called her? If he did, it would only be to tell her she was being removed from her position. Or worse.
She played the message as she undressed. It was from Phoebe. Funny. Phoebe hadn’t even been speaking to her for months—maybe years, if one wanted to get technical—before this mess had thrown them together. Ione had been the one leaving unanswered messages.
“Ione, I know you don’t want to be bothered right now, but something’s happened.”
She paused in pulling on her yoga pants.
“I don’t like talking on a machine. Could you please call me? This is serious. I’m kind of freaking out over here.”
Images of Theia and Rhea lying mangled on the freeway like the bodies of their parents eleven years ago seized her, and Ione sucked in her breath as if someone had punched her in the gut. No. No, please. Don’t let it be one of the twins.
She grabbed the phone and hit Phoebe’s number on speed dial. Her sister picked up immediately.
“Phoebe, it’s me. What is it? What’s happened? Are they okay?”
“They?”
“The twins. You said something happened.”
“Oh, God, no. Nothing like that. They’re fine. I mean, as far as I know. I haven’t talked to them. I wanted to talk to you first.”
The pressure squeezing her heart and lungs eased. “What, then? You said it was serious.”
“I’ve been over at Rafe’s for a few days. We brought Puddleglum with us. Thank goodness.”
Ione rolled her eyes. Phoebe treated that cat like it was her baby.
“When I got home this afternoon, there was—someone left—something...on my porch.”
Ione’s stomach clenched. “A dead cat.”
“Damn. You, too?”
“At the temple this morning. There was a note.”
“Yeah, I got a note, too. ‘Righteousness will not dwell in an unclean temple.’ I don’t even know what that means.”
“Was it signed ‘Nemesis’?”
“Maybe. The handwriting was so stylized. I think it’s written in blood. I thought it said Genesis.” A rustling sound followed before Phoebe spoke again. “Yeah, I think that’s it, after all. Nemesis. Who’s Nemesis?”
Ione sighed. “I don’t know, but the note I got was a little more detailed. Nemesis laid out a disputation in ten theses explaining why my impure blood was polluting the Covent, promising to purify the temple.”
“Oh, hell. I’m sorry.”
“Whoever he or she is, I think Nemesis is working with Carter.”
Phoebe made a sharp noise of disapproval. “Goddamn him. I thought we were done with his sorry ass.”
“Whose sorry ass?” Rafe’s deep, baritone voice came from the background.
Phoebe snorted. “One guess, babe. I’m putting you on speaker, Di.” Only her sisters got to call her that. Anyone else would find themselves on the receiving end of a palm-heel strike to the sternum.
Rafe’s voice became clearer. “You think this is Hamilton’s doing?”
Ione shrugged at the phone. “Nemesis brought up the ‘Lilith gene.’ Who else knows about it besides us? You haven’t told anyone else, have you, Phoebe?”
“Oh, shoot. You know, I did take out that full-page, coming-out ad in the Sedona Demon Times. Should I not have done that?”
Ione was used to pretending her little sister hadn’t spoken. “Besides the five of us, Carter’s the only one who knows.” She sighed. Might as well tell them about the birds. “This wasn’t the first dead animal I was gifted with, either. I’ve been finding dead crows on my doorstep.”
“Crows.” The symbolism seemed significant to Phoebe.
“Why, does that mean something?”
“That’s one of Rafe’s naguals.”
This was news to Ione. “You have more than one nagual?”
Rafe cleared his throat as though Phoebe had mentioned something indelicate. “I transformed into a crow early in the quetzal’s awakening. I believe it was a subconscious response to Hamilton using his necromantic powers to become the coyote when he was appropriating the authority of Quetzalcoatl’s nemesis, Tezcatlipoca.”
Nemesis. There was that word again.
“It does seem like Hamilton’s MO.” Rafe paused. “Why were you at the temple on a Saturday morning?”
“They sent a Covent assayer to investigate me—sort of a magical insurance claim adjuster—and he was there, along with the entire coven, when we discovered the cat.”
“No.” Phoebe managed to give that one little monosyllabic word the weight of an entire sentence.
Rafe was subdued. “I’m so sorry about all this, Ione.”
“I suppose it was inevitable. And this is not your fault, Rafe. I just wish they’d sent an actual licensed investigator so we could find out how Carter’s doing this. If he’s communicating with someone on the outside, I don’t think we have a legal right to know.” She paused. “There must be some private investigators you work with through the Public Defender’s Office, Phoebe. Maybe there’s someone you can recommend?”
“Um, yeah, about that...”
“You might as well tell her, babe.”
Ione’s entire body went tense, like it used to when Phoebe’s high school would call to tell her legal guardian about her latest trip to the principal’s office. “Tell me what?”
“I don’t work for the PD’s office anymore. I quit my job to apprentice as a private investigator.”
Ione’s blood pressure shot through the roof. “You quit your job? You spent three years getting that law degree, Phoebe. Not to mention all the time you’ve spent putting in your dues. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking practicing law while having shades jump in and out of me at random is never going to stop being a conflict of interest. Not to mention awkward in the courtroom.”
“Can’t you just forbid the shades to bother you?”
“That’s not exactly how it works. And I happen to like helping them. We’ve been over this a hundred times. I’m not giving it up. Even if I could keep them out, I won’t.”
“I didn’t mean you shouldn’t help at all. It’s just...you’re a really good lawyer, Phoebe.”
Phoebe was silent for a moment, as if Ione had shocked her. “You’ve never said that before.”
“You already know you’re good at it. Why do I have to tell you?”
Phoebe sighed. “Anyway, I can always return to practicing law if this doesn’t work out. But right now I’d say it’s damn lucky I have my investigator’s license, because I have access to the prison visitor and communication logs at the Florence State Prison.”
“Oh.” Ione smiled reluctantly. “I guess that is lucky, then.”
“I’ll take a drive down there and see what I can find out.”
“I’ve strengthened the protection spell around Phoebe and around the house,” Rafe reassured Ione before she could object. “I can come over and ward the perimeter at your place, too, if you like. My wards have a little extra kick these days with the quetzal magic.”
“Why not?” A little extra protection couldn’t hurt.
* * *
Dev was starting to think certain members of the Council had given him this assignment on purpose to smoke him out. Rumors had surrounded his mentor Simon’s death and Dev’s part in it. There was no question that something unnatural had attacked them both, but no one had quite been willing to say “demon.” At least not aloud. And now some anonymous person was making accusations about demon blood and cleansing the Covent—and Dev was right in the middle of it.
He tried to shake off the disturbing events of the day as he headed back to his hotel. Documenting the impressions he’d gathered from the day’s interviews—and the peculiar turn of events that had cut them short, he’d ended up staying at the temple much later than he’d planned.
The temple itself was a curious combination of enchanting and repelling. The temporal and spatial glamour around it to keep the general public from prying was exceptional. He hadn’t even noticed the property as he’d approached this morning—though he’d been mesmerized by the landscape, which he supposed was part of the magic the glamour merely needed to draw from—until the white neo-Gothic spires had risen from among the damp rocks looking utterly out of place.
Despite the incongruous beauty of it, he’d felt the unpleasant residue of necromancy hanging in the air about the temple as he’d followed the twisting road to the small courtyard at the center of the labyrinth. No amount of stark, unearthly white stone had been able to mask what seemed like an almost visible muddy-gray pall. He’d thought then it was the negative influence of the necromancer and his high-priestess girlfriend, but now that he’d met Ione, Dev wasn’t so sure. Perhaps the person who’d left the note and the dead cat had been hiding somewhere on the property at the time. That might have accounted for it.
But he was done thinking about those gruesome images for today. There was ordinary enchantment all around him. He’d thought the view spectacular this morning, but he’d been preoccupied with the case. Or maybe it was simply more stunning this direction. Light rain fell like an afterthought on the pillars and domes of rock lining the highway. Their fantastic orangey-red hues struck a breathtaking contrast with the cerulean sky melting into a blend of indigo and violet—like the juice of a pomegranate running into the horizon. It was as if he’d driven off the highway into the land of the Fae, otherworldly and impossibly beautiful in a way he couldn’t even articulate.
Much like his impression of Ione Carlisle.
Dev groaned. Best to nip that kind of thinking in the bud. She was the subject of his investigation and nothing more.
He tried to steer his thoughts toward a safer target—the image of Kylie driving away on her motorbike last night, leather pants supple against the shapely arse on the seat—the arse he’d let slip away because he hadn’t been adequately prepared. He’d had no business starting something with her in the first place when it came to that. He’d gone to the pub to experience the local color, playing tourist before he had to face the drudgery of his assignment. But, despite the fact that she hadn’t been his type, he couldn’t get over the odd intensity of his response to her.
He felt like he’d taken the tiniest bite of enchanted Turkish delight before losing sight of the sleigh on which the White Witch of Narnia had ridden away, only to realize he’d die without another taste of that unearthly sweet.
Dev laughed. That sugary metaphor was Kur’s influence for certain. “All right, you miserable sod. Let’s go look for the White Witch.” At least it would get his mind off Ione Carlisle.
Chapter 6 (#u01760b51-3c5e-5b7c-8c5b-260a9f903794)
Ione had hit pay dirt. She rarely put on the glamour two nights in a row, as the magic could be both exhausting and addicting, but with Carter’s campaign against her escalating from petty harassment to disturbing threats, she was more determined than ever to find out who was helping him. Rafe had finished giving the wards around her place a final infusion of quetzal magic just before dusk, giving her just enough time to perform the glamour before heading to Bitters once more.
As soon as she’d arrived she’d struck up a conversation at the bar with an off-duty cop who bragged of connections with “certain important people in the community.” He’d promised to put Kylie in touch with “an interesting crowd” looking for fun girls like herself for the parties they hosted. The braggadocio, combined with his aggressively sexual behavior, seemed promising in terms of the sort of dirtball she was looking for. She’d even dropped a few names herself, mentioning how sad she’d been when her friends Barbie Fisher and Monique Hernandez—two of Carter’s unfortunate victims—had died this past summer.
As she flirted with him, however, a familiar deep vibration—like the hum of machinery buried miles underground, the beating heart of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis—struck Ione to the core. Without glancing up, she knew Dev Gideon had entered the club. Dammit. What was he doing here again? The answer, of course, was looking for Kylie. She had to admit, she’d probably made a hell of an impression.
“Fancy meeting you here.” The cultured British accent behind her sent a delicious shiver up her spine. Which was so not cool.
She turned, prepared to make some sort of smart remark about his natty, out-of-place suit, but the sight of the white T-shirt stretched over his pecs and tucked into a pair of jeans that drew her eyes straight to his crotch left her with her mouth hanging open.
Ione closed it carefully and let her gaze travel back up to his face and the amused luster in the golden-brown eyes. “I see you got into something a little more comfortable.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I’d like to.” Damn, this boy learned fast. But Ione wasn’t going to succumb to her inappropriately pumping blood. This was the Covent’s assayer and, now that she knew it, she wasn’t about to let her pussy lead her around on a leash and do something foolish.
“Mind if I sit?”
Yes, you mind, dumbass. Do not encourage him. “Actually, I was just...” Her voice trailed off as she glanced at the seat to her left and saw that “Officer Paul” had moved on to hit on a group of giggling undergrads—probably drinking on fake IDs—at the next table. She wanted to jump up and tell them they were being creeped on by a predator, but they would only think she was trying to bad-mouth him because she was jealous that he’d switched his attention to them. And it would have blown any chance she had of getting closer to the ringleaders.
Dev had already slid onto the stool on her right, his arm so close to hers that little pulses of static electricity seemed to be flowing between them. And he smelled delicious. Without meaning to, she’d moved her arm closer.
“What are you drinking?”
For a moment she thought he’d said, “What are you thinking?” Which was a very good question.
Ione tamped down her runaway libido. “Water.”
“Keeping safety in mind, then?”
She swiveled on her stool and rested her elbow on the bar to study him. “Why? Did you come prepared to ride?” She groaned internally, her sensible self watching her speak as if it was just an observer. Her libido was threatening mutiny. This was not going to happen tonight.
Dev’s cocky smile widened into a grin. “Even brought my own helmet.”
“Is that a metaphor?” Why was she still talking?
“Do you want it to be?”
It was like she had a pulse in her pussy. Ione’s rational mind made one last, desperate attempt to rein herself in. She was going to regret this. It was one thing fooling around with some stranger in a parking lot. But this was someone she was absolutely guaranteed to see again, and not in a pleasant capacity. It wasn’t a matter of right or wrong, even. Just a matter of not being stupid. She absolutely could not do this.
Ione swung off the stool. “Well, let’s see how you sit a saddle, then, cowboy.” She was going to hell.
* * *
Dev gave Kylie’s waist the tiniest tug to set her hips squarely against his thighs as she started up the bike after he’d climbed on behind her. She’d been highly amused when he got the helmet from his rental. He hadn’t wanted to give her any opportunity to ride off and leave his arse in the dust again. He wasn’t averse to screwing in the backseat of an automobile, but it wasn’t his first choice, and he imagined it wasn’t hers, either. He’d been perfectly prepared to offer to drive to his hotel, but he’d been hoping she’d opt for her place.
He hadn’t been on a bike in years. Kur seemed quite taken with it. He could swear the little bastard was purring inside him. Lord knew, Dev felt like purring.
Kylie’s waist was warm against his palms as he held her lightly beneath her jacket while they sped through the now cloudless night. The stars were rather spectacular out here, unimpeded by bright city lights. No wonder Percival Lowell had built his observatory in the mountains near this desert. They were heading down the highway in the same direction as the temple, turning just a bit south of it onto a twisting road among the spectacular rock formations.
Another half mile up into the hills, Kylie pulled into the driveway of a white, split-level stucco. The garage door opened, admitting them smoothly and closing automatically as Kylie came to a stop and shut off the engine. She took off her helmet, shaking out her blond waves, and Dev swung off the bike behind her and followed suit—sans hair swinging.
Kylie didn’t speak as they went through a side door into the interior, but before she opened the inner door, Dev curled his arm around her waist and stopped her in her tracks to kiss down the back of her neck. She tilted her head to the side, just a slight acknowledgment that gave him greater access, letting him work his way toward the front. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and unzipped the jacket as he traced his tongue along her jawline, slipping his hands inside the leather to cup her breasts.
Kylie leaned back against him with a soft moan that made his stiffening cock spring completely to attention. As tightly as he was holding her, there was no way for her to miss it.
She chuckled softly in her throat. “This is the laundry room, in case you hadn’t noticed. Do you maybe want to see the rest of the house or were you planning on bending me over the washing machine?”
He hadn’t been, but now that she’d mentioned it...
Kylie turned in his arms, blue eyes sparkling like the stars over the desert. “You got that helmet?”
Stupidly, he almost answered that he’d left it on the bike before realizing they were doing metaphor again. He grinned, unbuckling his belt and opening his trousers.
Kylie’s eyes were amused as he shifted his hands from his trousers to hers. “I take it that’s a yes?”
“Yes.” He kissed her as he yanked her belt from the loops, and she gasped into his mouth. He hadn’t meant to take the belt clean out, but there it was in his hands. He wrapped it lightly, teasingly, around her wrists as he let go of her mouth, giving her plenty of opportunity to slip her hands out. Instead she wove her fingers together, breath quickening as she held his gaze.
Dev slid the belt through the loop and buckled it, pulling it just a notch tighter than he needed to. He unfastened Kylie’s pants and slipped his fingers inside, breaching the lace, inching downward and finding the warm hood of her clit. Kylie moaned, blue eyes lidded with desire, pressing herself against his fingers.
“You’d better not be a psychopath,” she said breathlessly.
Dev smirked. “A bit of a pervert, perhaps, but definitely not a psychopath.” He drew his hand out, making her moan again, this time with disappointment. “Before we go any further, I just want to get a verbal—”
“Yes. For God’s sake, yes.”
He stopped wasting time and yanked the leather trousers and lacy pants down her hips in one go, then picked her up with his hands on either side of her waist and sat her firmly on top of the washer. The brushed steel had to be freezing but she didn’t complain. The legs of her trousers were too narrow to get over the heels of her boots so he stepped into the circle of her knees instead of bothering with tugging off all the leather.
Dev kissed her once more, enjoying the way she trembled at his touch while hooking her ankles behind his arse and tugging him closer. She had a way of being in control and ceding just the right amount of it at the same time. But he wanted a little more of it just at the moment. He lifted her arms above her head and slid the belt buckle onto a hook on the underside of the shelf overhead meant for hanging clothes. The slight stretch raised up her cotton shirt on her waist. He pushed it higher, letting his thumbs drag over the hard points of her nipples through the lace of the bra as he lifted the shirt to sit above it.
Kylie squirmed on the washer lid, suddenly making kitten noises instead of deep moans. This was where he wanted her, so soaked with desire that she didn’t care how she sounded. He tugged the bra down and lowered his head to her breasts, sucking each nipple in turn while she writhed and made more insistent mewling sounds.
He dug in his pocket for the condom, not finding it for a horrible moment, and enduring a look of disbelief from Kylie that promised coming wrath, just before his fingers closed over it. Dev presented it in triumph and grinned as he opened the foil packet. She rewarded him with a dig of her heels into his thighs like she was urging a horse to full speed, and Dev complied, unrolling the condom onto his cock and driving forward to meet her as she bucked against him.
The washer was already slick with her arousal and the unimpeded motion joined them together like a freight car coupling with a train. Dev held her face between his hands, marveling that her sparkling eyes now seemed more green than blue, and groaned appreciatively as she rocked against him with a circular motion of her pelvis. Kylie turned her head and sucked his thumb into her mouth—the thumb he’d dragged against the slickness on the metal as he’d pulled her in close. She moaned at her own taste and closed her eyes, and Dev braced his free hand against the washer and began pumping his hips, thrusting inside her with all the grace of a wild animal taken over by the instinctive drive to procreate.
His thumb slipped from her mouth and Kylie threw her head back, moaning loudly in tempo with his vigorous thrusts. Determined to make her miss a beat, he picked up speed, driving her to a stuttering staccato, and Kylie let her legs fall open, arching her back and making the most insanely hot keening wail he’d ever heard in his life. The sound dropped into a sort of mournfully sexy moan as her head hung forward, and it was only then he realized he’d already made her come.
The look she gave him as he unbuckled the belt around her wrists was somewhat dazed. Dev draped her arms over his shoulders and lifted her off the washer, supporting her with her buttocks cupped in his hands.
“Where’s your bed?”
Kylie tightened her arms around his neck. “Through the door and up the stairs.”
She clung to him while he let go with one hand to turn the doorknob, and then he rebalanced her weight against him and stepped up into the utility closet off the kitchen. The stairs were to the left. Dev had to draw on the demon’s strength to mount the stairs without losing his grip on Kylie—in more ways than one.
“Second door on the left,” Kylie gasped as he reached the landing overhanging the living room below. A decorative iron railing was the only thing between them and a ten-foot drop.
Dev managed to swing Kylie through the bedroom door and onto the bed without a mishap. He wanted to hear her make more noise. A lot of it. He pulled out, careful not to let the condom slip, and Kylie protested, trying to hook him in place with her boot heels.
“There’ll be plenty of time for that,” he said patiently. “I’m not done with you yet.” He had to duck down and sidle backward to get out of her grip, and he had the feeling he would have failed if the leather trousers weren’t so difficult for her to maneuver in. Dev worked her boots off and tossed them aside, and Kylie watched him as he slid the leather over her ankles one at a time. The look in her eyes made him wish he’d kept her belt a little longer. Of course, he did have his own.
Her eyes fixed on his hands as he began to work his belt out of the loops. “What are you doing?”
“I left yours downstairs.”
She raised an eyebrow but didn’t stop him when he slipped her arms from the leather jacket and trussed her wrists a second time. “You’d better make this worth my while.”
“Count on it.” He winked and rolled her over onto her stomach before she could protest, slipping the belt through the headboard and tying it off.
Kylie turned her head. “That yes I gave you wasn’t an irrevocable free pass to the entire amusement park. Certain rides take extra tickets.”
Dev laughed as he climbed onto the bed and stretched himself along her length. “Don’t worry.” He kissed the back of her neck, breathing in her scent. “I intend to earn every ticket I plan to use.” He unhooked her bra, glad to see it was the kind with adjustable straps that crossed in back. All he had to do was slip the little hooks at the end out of the tabs and he was able to draw the entire garment out from under her. Otherwise, he’d have had to resort to his pocket knife.
Unfettered, Kylie wiggled to reposition herself against the bedspread. “Nice trick.”
“I know a few.” He kissed his way down her back, drawing a contented hum from her when he placed one at the top of her bum. He wasn’t going for contented hums. His tongue slipping along her crack made her shiver and let out a little gasp. Still not what he was going for.
Dev spread her cheeks with his thumbs and made his slow, steady way over every little bump and ridge of flesh while she moaned into the pillow until he reached what he was after and thrust his tongue against the swollen flesh between her legs. Kylie made those kitten noises again as he tasted her, drawing the flat of his tongue from bottom to top, from his perspective, like the first, gluttonous lick of an ice cream cone.
The kitteny sounds got louder as he stroked again, spreading her open. Lifting her hips a little to give himself better access, Dev buried his face in her heat, his mouth locked on the prize.
Kylie’s moans were loud and unabashed as she shook under his attentions, rolling her hips in his hands, shuddering and gasping until she was almost crying. When he was sure he’d made her climax, he straddled her legs and leaned down to her ear. It was wet with tears. She really was crying.
Dev laid a hand on her back. “You okay, darling?” He thought for a moment she was sobbing but realized she’d begun laughing uncontrollably.
“Am I okay?” she gasped between the laughter. “Holy Mother of God. If you want to kill me that way, it’s fine with me, but if you’re planning to fuck me, I think you’d better do it quick before you render me unconscious with that damn tongue.”
Dev wasn’t about to waste any time. He yanked off his boots, stripped off his clothes, and drew Kylie up onto her knees and entered her once more while she pulled back on the belt that held her wrists and rocked into him to meet his thrusts. Feeling light-headed as he pounded toward climax, he dismissed it as the natural effect of his pent-up desire.
He put his mouth close to her ear. “Do you want me to come inside you?”
Kylie moaned and gyrated her hips. “God, yes.”
“Tell me. Tell me to do it.”
She turned her head toward him and he leaned in to snatch her mouth with his so that the words were moaned against his lips. “I want you to come. Come for me.”
Dev jolted inside her with a roar of pleasure, biting her lip a bit harder than he’d meant to and tasting a drop of blood as the ejaculation shot out of him. He felt as if every muscle he had was releasing simultaneously with it, and he clutched her waist to his as he collapsed onto his side against the bed with an almost giddy sense of lightness.
“That was—” He tried to catch his breath, licking the salty taste of blood from his lip. “That was—” He pulled out swiftly with a cry of surprise as the scar tissue at his back felt like it had caught fire.
“Dev?” Kylie tried to turn her head toward him. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
He was on fire, every inch of him crawling with agonizing heat. Dev looked down at his chest. His skin looked like it was boiling. No...it looked like it was—
“Kurrrrr!” The word, hurled from his tongue, was the last coherent thought in his head before he leaped from the bed and stumbled backward on the floor with a sound coming out of his throat that wasn’t his own.
Chapter 7 (#u01760b51-3c5e-5b7c-8c5b-260a9f903794)
In place of the constant tingle that had been animating her skin since Dev’s first touch, an icy column of fear gripped her spine. That growl had not been human.
Scrabbling noises of something large and lumbering thudded along the wood floor. The bed shook with the impact.
“Dev?” Ione realized she’d squeezed her eyes shut and she opened them with effort. She was still facedown against the pillow, tethered to the headboard. She took a deep breath and turned her head. At the periphery of her vision, a dark shape hulked. A dark shape that was making heavy breathing sounds—and seemingly emitting steam. Oh, God.
She held her breath and grabbed the belt with one hand just above the spot where it was buckled while folding her other hand almost in two, the pad of her thumb against the outer edge and fingers tented tightly together, and tugged. Dev hadn’t strapped the belt tightly this time and, with a little effort, she freed the hand. She quickly undid the buckle to free the other. Ione sat up on her knees and took another breath before turning around.
An expletive she’d only uttered once or twice in her life burst out of her as she scrambled back against the headboard. Covered in vivid green scales, like poison personified, the creature hulked inside her doorway on all fours, its massive bulk tight and compact, as if ready to pounce. Tension quivered in its thick, muscular limbs, while fiery gold eyes glared out at her from a narrow, reptilian face beneath a bumpy, ridged forehead that sloped back into hornlike protrusions. The bumps on its head continued in a bisecting ridge of the bony substance that traveled down the creature’s body and all the way to the end of the long tail stretching out the door.
The hottest sex she’d ever had and the guy had to get eaten by a monster. And she was about to be the second course.
Her mind was processing this, assessing the situation, as though hulking monsters in one’s bedroom were an ordinary occurrence.
The creature breathed out a huff of steam and made a deep growling noise in its throat that seemed to set the whole house rumbling. Ione considered going for the gun she kept loaded in the nightstand. Her eyes flicked toward it. Depending on how fast this thing moved—the thing moved, and instinct kicked in. Change the perception of a thing and you might change the thing itself.
Ione flung out her hand toward the creature with a sort of battle cry, pushing against air with a move she’d learned in krav maga. The monster flipped backward, cracking the doorframe as it tore through it, a look of surprise in its fiery eyes as it righted itself and skidded along the landing. Ione was almost as surprised as it seemed to be. She’d imagined the force of air throwing it backward, but she hadn’t really expected it to work. It crouched on the landing, tail switching and taking out a row of the railing behind it. Before she could lose her nerve and allow logic to surface, she made the gesture and shouted again, this time with words.
“In the name of God and the Goddess, get out!”
The creature tumbled backward over the railing, batlike wings at awkward angles as if it had forgotten how to use them, and landed on its back on her living room floor with enough force to shake the building. She prepared for an attack, this time going for the gun, and ran out onto the landing with the weapon in both hands, aimed at the thing’s skull. She’d taken shooting lessons to be sure she’d know how to use it if the time ever came, but she’d never actually had to fire at anything but a shooting-range target.
Ione squeezed the trigger, realizing too late she’d also squeezed her eyes shut. The bullet struck the window behind the thing’s head.
Instead of lunging for her, the creature got to its feet and turned to barrel into the wide pane of plate glass that extended across the far wall. The thick glass shattered and the beast clambered through it only to let out a roar of surprise as it struck an invisible barrier inside the walled garden. Rafe’s wards.
“Oh, crap.” She hadn’t expected to need anything to get out; they were fashioned to keep unwanted magic from getting in. If they’d been her own, she could have unlocked them, but these were Rafe’s arcane Aztec symbols.
Ione stepped onto the landing, the gun still aimed at the creature in her backyard. If the place was warded so well that this thing couldn’t get out...how the hell had it gotten in? The golden eyes blinked at her like huge tiger’s-eye gemstones.
“No...effing...way.”
Steam huffed gently from its nostrils as it contemplated her from where it sprawled in the blanket of shattered glass. Ione was still holding a gun on it, threatening a creature she’d effectively cornered. And she was standing naked on her landing. She lowered the gun. The creature didn’t move. Ione stepped into the bedroom to grab her robe from the door. There were Dev’s pants and boots in a heap at the foot of the bed. She stepped back out, wrapping the robe around her. The creature hadn’t moved except to sit back on its haunches like a dog waiting for its master.
Ione descended the spiral staircase that led to the second floor from the front entryway, gun still clutched in her hand, and slowly approached the broken window. The creature breathed out a soft plume of smoke and lowered itself to the ground, settling its bumpy muzzle against its front feet.
With her finger poised on the trigger, Ione studied the glittering eyes from her closer vantage point. “What the hell, Dev?”
The creature let out a sigh, its ridged back gently rising and falling.
She took a step closer. “If that’s really you...why can’t you change back?” Eustace Scrubb had woken up similarly transformed in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader after falling asleep in a dragon’s lair coveting its hoard. What had Dev coveted? Ione? Well, Kylie, anyway. She glanced up at her reflection in what remained of the window. Crap. Ione. When had she lost the glamour? Not that it mattered now. The Covent assayer sent to end her career had screwed her brains out and turned into a dragon. Because, seriously, this was a dragon she was looking at.
“Did I do this to you? My Lilith blood?” The dragon didn’t seem to have the answer to that.
Someone was going to walk by and see this thing from the side path. “Come in here. It’s all right. I won’t shoot you.” She set the gun aside and opened her palms to show they were empty in case the dragon couldn’t understand human speech.
The creature raised its head, tilting it.
“Come on.” She pointed inside the house.
The dragon rose a bit clumsily and she saw why as it started forward. Blood dripped from its left foreleg. She hadn’t entirely missed it, after all.
Ione backed out of the way as the dragon limped through the gap in the wall and hovered just inside. Whether or not it had Dev’s consciousness in there, it definitely wasn’t trying to hurt her.
Watching her, it settled onto the floor, favoring the leg she’d struck, and curled its tail around its body, again resembling an obedient dog. Except this “dog” was taking up half her living room—and would take up all of it if it stood and stretched its wings.
She took a tentative step toward it. “Can I look at your leg?” When it didn’t move to stop her, she came closer and crouched beside it to try to determine how badly she’d injured it. She’d heard the bullet hit the window, so it must have gone clean through. Ione could only see one wound. Perhaps she’d just clipped it. Even so, the dragon was losing a fair amount of blood.
“Stay here.” Ione went for the first-aid kit in the downstairs bathroom opposite the laundry where Dev had—Christ.
With the little kit in hand, she realized what she had wasn’t exactly made for dragon proportions. Or dragon flesh. She brought a towel with her to clean the wound and ended up tying it in place around the upper foreleg. The gauze and bandages were useless. The dragon put up with it patiently.
“Sorry.” She glanced up at the glowing gold eyes. “It’s a good thing I’m not a better shot.”
The dragon made a soft rumble in its throat that might have been a growl or a murmur of agreement. Ione’s stomach answered with a growl of its own. She hadn’t eaten anything since a cup of cottage cheese and a pear before going to the club. Dev probably hadn’t eaten dinner, either. Which meant the dragon was probably hungry. What did dragons eat? It was sort of like a dinosaur, which was a sort of lizard, right? What did lizards eat? Smaller lizards? Ione was on a vegetarian kick, so the only animal proteins in the house were eggs and cheese. Maybe lizards were herbivores.
She compromised and scrambled some eggs with spinach, mushrooms and peppers and crumbled some sharp cheddar and seitan sausage substitute into it. After dishing it up—the largest portion in a big serving bowl—she grabbed the rest of the bag of spinach and tossed it into a separate bowl with some cucumbers and tomatoes, just to give the dragon some options.
“I wasn’t sure if you were hungry,” she said coming back from the kitchen with the food. “I’m always starving after s—” She swallowed the word, heat rushing to her face. The dragon probably had no idea what she was saying, but it didn’t seem right to discuss having been intimate with someone who was no longer in human form. “I don’t know if you’re a grazer or a hunter. I’m guessing hunter, but this is all new to me...so, here—take your pick.” She set the bowls in front of the dragon, but it merely gave them a disinterested sniff.
“Suit yourself.” Ione sat to eat on the one chair that hadn’t been knocked over in the chaos.
By the time she’d finished eating, the towel she’d tied around the dragon’s wound was soaked through. Ione got another from the laundry room and this time wrapped it around a smaller towel folded into a square and pressed against the wound. She could swear as she finished that the dragon was purring.
She tucked her robe around herself as she stood, realizing she’d probably been flashing it. Not that Dev hadn’t seen it all, but this wasn’t exactly Dev. Ione pinched the bridge of her nose and realized how tired she was. The events of the night had worn her out—some more pleasantly than others. Maybe she’d be able to come up with some way of dealing with the dragon in the morning if she just got some sleep.
Damp wind was still blowing through the gaping hole that had been her living room wall. Ione pulled the heavy curtains across it, which helped a little. Between Rafe’s wards and the alarm system—and the fact that a freaking dragon was camped out in her living room—she’d probably be safe enough. She pocketed the Glock just in case.
“Okay, I’m going up to bed. Will you be all right down here?” Like he was going to answer. “Okay,” she said again. “Good night.”
She figured she’d probably just lie there on the bed no matter how tired she was. How could she possibly sleep with a dragon in her living room? But she was out like a light, only waking early in the morning to a loud thudding and clattering on the stairs.
Ione grabbed the gun and jumped up, launching herself into the hall to find the dragon clumsily attempting to climb the spiral staircase, its tail coiling through the railing.
“Mother of God. What are you doing?”
The dragon’s claws slipped on the open wooden stairs and it tumbled backward before flinging its wings out instinctively to catch itself, apparently finally remembering it could fly. It circled the open-plan area beneath the vaulted ceiling, sweeping pictures off the wall and onto the living room floor—with every other item it had knocked over on its way to the stairs—finally settling on the landing, puffing steam like the “Little Engine That Could” and looking rather smug.
Ione tucked the pistol into her waistband at the back of her cotton pajamas. “You’re pretty pleased with yourself, I see. What do you want, a treat?” The dragon tilted its head. Ione yawned. Judging from the pale glow from the skylight, it was about six in the morning. “I’m going back to bed. If you’re hungry, you’re going to have to wait until a reasonable hour.”
After climbing back under the covers, she heard the dragon lumber into the room, just barely clearing the door frame, and settle onto the floor by the bed. Ione opened one eye as the dragon curled its tail over itself like a cat for warmth. How a dragon could be cold with steam coming out of it, she wasn’t sure, but it certainly made for a comfortable room for a human.
She woke again a few hours later to find the dragon gone, but a curious lapping sound was coming from the bathroom down the hall. “Oh, God.” She’d forgotten to give it water. This was why she didn’t have pets. Among other reasons.
Ione kept her eyes closed and pretended not to hear it, stirring only as the dragon thumped back into the room. She opened her eyes, a bit disappointed that the dragon’s transformation hadn’t simply reversed given a few hours. Was he going to be stuck like this? Blood was dripping down the creature’s foreleg, the makeshift bandage soaked through.
She got up and got another set of towels to replace the sodden ones, trying not to think about the state of her pale wood floors and the cream-colored carpet in the living room as she rebandaged the wound.
But by the time she’d cleaned up and gone to the bathroom, blood was already seeping through the towel. Shouldn’t the bleeding have stopped? Maybe dragons had different circulation systems. What the hell was she going to do? It wasn’t like she could dial 9-1-1 and get a paramedic over here to treat a dragon. She needed a vet.
It occurred to her that Theia had worked as a veterinary assistant while studying for her degree in zoology. God, she couldn’t bring Theia into this.
The dragon’s warm breath seemed to be more rapid than it had been. She had to do something.
Theia answered on the first ring. “Hey, Di. Guess you must have felt me dreaming about you, huh?”
“Uh, no. Not exactly.” Before learning about the Lilith blood, she’d never taken her baby sister’s prophetic dreams seriously. “What have you been dreaming?”
“Mostly just vague dreams about power—your magic growing stronger.”
Ione didn’t know about that, unless her magical abilities had been responsible for what had happened to Dev.
“I also dreamed you got a dog. Which is hilarious, because you hate animals.”
“I do not hate animals. I just don’t like having to clean up after them. I did enough cleaning up after you guys.” She bit her tongue. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“You did, but that’s okay. I know it couldn’t have been easy having to take care of a bunch of snot-nosed kids when you were barely more than a kid yourself. And we love you for it. You know that.”
Ione’s eyes were smarting and she pinched her arm. She couldn’t afford to be sentimental right now.
“Actually, that’s what I’m calling about. Animals. Do you know anything about...reptiles?” God, was it a reptile? Were dragons reptiles?
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Jane Kindred
One Night with a Dragon…Ione Carlisle worked hard to be accepted by the Sedona Covent, but now everything is falling apart. Especially when she lets loose for one wild night on the town and ends up with the one man she should be avoiding at all costs – the man who came to Sedona to fire her. He ignites in her a carnal need that she can't and won't ignore…Buttoned-up assayer Dev Gideon's loyalty to the Leadership Council should be reason enough to resist Ione. Never mind that she stirs the ancient demon secretly bound within him. But their blood connection is undeniable. And now Dev must risk his reputation, and his soul, to save Ione from a vigilante intent on destroying her and the entire Covent, even if that means unleashing the monster inside.
One Night with a Dragon...
Ione Carlisle worked hard to be accepted by the Sedona Covent, but now everything is falling apart. Especially when she lets loose for a wild night on the town and ends up with the one man she should be avoiding at all costs—the man who came to Sedona to fire her. He ignites in her a carnal need that she can’t and won’t ignore...
Buttoned-up assayer Dev Gideon’s loyalty to the Leadership Council should be reason enough to resist Ione. Never mind that she stirs the ancient demon secretly bound within him. But their blood connection is undeniable. And now Dev must risk his reputation, and his soul, to save Ione from a vigilante intent on destroying her and the entire Covent, even if it means unleashing the monster inside.
“Your skin. It’s...” Dev looked down at their hands, where the live current seemed to dance between them.
“Electrifying?” Ione drew him to the couch. “Not bragging. You have the same effect on me. I think Kur’s blood has mixed with your own and it responds to the Lilith blood in mine. As mine does to yours.”
He sat beside her, bemused.
“I’m not sure what it means, but I’m not going to bother trying to figure it out right now. Suffice it to say, you’re the last person I should be attracted to. You’ve been sent to take everything away from me.”
“That’s not exactly—”
“And yet I find you irresistible.”
Dev ran his tongue along his bottom lip. “Well, I know this isn’t necessarily the wisest thing,” he said, rising and sweeping her up. He hiked up her skirt as she wrapped her legs around him. “But it is definitely what I need.”
JANE KINDRED is the author of the Demons of Elysium series of M/M erotic fantasy romance, the Looking Glass Gods dark fantasy tetralogy and the gothic paranormal romance The Lost Coast. Jane spent her formative years ruining her eyes reading romance novels in the Tucson sun and watching Star Trek marathons in the dark. She now writes to the sound of San Francisco foghorns while two cats slowly but surely edge her off the side of the bed.
Jane is represented by Sara Megibow of KT Literary.
Bewitching the Dragon
Jane Kindred
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For my big sisters, who may not always get why I write what I write but have always encouraged me to write it.
Contents
Cover (#ub895b937-299b-53e1-8cff-5a96fb3dd1b4)
Back Cover Text (#u72876699-7644-50bf-af54-c7ff5ba4c880)
Introduction (#uef68993e-f95f-5ace-852b-c1d79f357a83)
About the Author (#u86c3848d-e779-5e43-8818-6216eb108294)
Title Page (#ub7fb8875-2f5f-5347-962b-d71e1166fbd7)
Dedication (#u9b005fd9-9877-583b-9c16-683955db0044)
Chapter 1 (#ue046faff-d6e4-5a6a-9d0d-da6eb3b362d0)
Chapter 2 (#uf7fe16de-bb86-5413-8243-7534bc03e38a)
Chapter 3 (#u93bed648-c066-54cb-aea8-0345be52ba03)
Chapter 4 (#ufe779bd8-e594-5b89-ae47-7fd962a83196)
Chapter 5 (#u611cd338-af9a-52b0-9a77-29be0bde5cd3)
Chapter 6 (#u2c1fc2f6-8404-501a-8edf-4b645d52eb19)
Chapter 7 (#ud87d8609-0e56-5a2e-8e40-697f19b31d72)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#u01760b51-3c5e-5b7c-8c5b-260a9f903794)
There was another dead crow on her doorstep this morning. A piece of red thread encircled its neck, not as though it had been the instrument of the crow’s death but as a macabre decoration, tied into a neat bow. After finding the dead birds three days in a row, Ione had come out to get the paper this morning armed with a pair of disposable latex gloves and a small paper sack.
Given the time of year, she might have assumed this was some practical joke from a neighborhood kid, maybe someone who knew she was a high priestess in the Craft. A setup, in poor taste, for a Halloween trick of which Ione was the punch line.
But it was no mystery who was behind this. This was a message from her ex. Carter Hanson Hamilton was up to his old tricks.
With the crow carefully deposited into the paper bag, she carried it around the side of the house to the outdoor altar—which did double duty as a brick-enclosed barbecue pit—and performed the Dispersal of Energy ritual to nullify whatever magical influence Carter might have in mind with these little gifts. The smell of smoke from the small blaze in the pit wouldn’t be completely out of season. Though the air was sharp and crisp this morning, it hadn’t quite gotten cool enough for a fire, but it was only a little late for a barbecue.
“Go in peace,” Ione murmured as she finished the ritual. She wasn’t sure if birds had spirits, but it couldn’t hurt to commend this one’s to a better rest.
The “Gladys Kravitz” of the Village of Oak Creek was watching her through the blinds of the house across the street as Ione came back around to the front. Ione gave her an exaggerated wave from the porch in her bathrobe and slippers. The blinds snapped shut. Maybe Ione had watched too much Bewitched on TV Land, but that woman was a dead ringer for Samantha Stevens’s nosy neighbor.
The phone was ringing when Ione stepped inside and she managed to catch it before it rolled over to the answering machine. Her younger sister Phoebe gave her endless amounts of crap about that machine, as if Ione were the last person in the world to still have a landline.
“Ione? Sorry to bother you at home. Um, oh—it’s Cal. Sorry. This is Calvin.” The tentative, apologetic tone was typical of Calvin Yee. The elderly Asian gentleman had been Covent kin for years, far longer than Ione had even been a member of the Sedona coven, but he still treated her as if she were his boss or a school professor.
Ione smiled into the phone. “Not a problem, Cal. What’s up?”
“Uh...the others thought I should let you know—we should let you know. I, uh, volunteered to be the one to let you know.”
Ione’s heart dropped into her stomach. It was finally happening. The coven had voted to boot her out on her butt. After weeks of walking around on eggshells, they’d finally decided they couldn’t work with a high priestess who’d been stupid enough to fall for a psychotic necromancer like Carter Hamilton.
With a deep breath, she gathered her courage. “To let me know what, Cal?”
“We’ve received a summons. All of us. Each of us.”
“A summons?” She let out the held breath cautiously. “From the Superior Court?” She’d thought this business with Carter was done. He’d confessed and was sitting in prison awaiting sentencing.
“No, somebody from the Covent leadership. We’ve been ordered to appear at the temple tomorrow morning at ten.”
“I see.” Crap. Maybe she was being ousted, just not by her personal coven members.
Calvin cleared his throat a few times with a couple of false starts before he continued. “You didn’t get one, I take it.”
“No, I didn’t. Thanks, Cal. I really appreciate you letting me know.”
Ione tried not to speculate about the possible intentions of the Covent’s pending action, but it was hard not to see a summons of her coven members that excluded her as anything but a kick in the teeth. She’d worked hard to be accepted into the Covent on her own skill and merit, and even harder to prove herself worthy of leadership. At twenty-nine, she’d become the youngest high priestess in the history of the Sedona Coventry. But at thirty, thanks to being dumb enough to fall for Carter, everything was falling apart.
One thing was for certain, there was no way she was going to sit at home and wait for someone else to decide her fate. She would be at the temple in the morning, whether the Covent leadership wanted her there or not.
In the meantime she had work to do. Carter might be safely behind bars but the creeps who’d patronized his little sideline business—paying for a shade possession called a “ride-along” for the ultimate in nonconsensual sexual thrills—were still out there. One of the call girls who’d participated as a living host before dying under suspicious circumstances and ending up on the other side of the equation had implicated cops, businessmen, even lawyers and judges. And none of them had been held accountable. After Carter’s arrest, they’d scurried away like roaches into their cracks and crevices of respectability. Ione was determined to find out where they’d gone into hiding and bring them out into the light.
Sedona’s nightlife was hardly that, but Ione had followed the rumor mill to a dive bar near Oak Creek Canyon that was unusually lively and catered to the kind of clientele Carter’s side business had thrived on. The mixture of college students and favorite sons plus a steady, inevitable stream of tourists provided a wealth of potential clients—as well as plenty of unwary young women to exploit. It wasn’t really the sort of place Ione Carlisle looked at home in. But she wasn’t Ione Carlisle tonight.
Magic, she’d learned, was merely a matter of perception. Change the perception of a thing and you might change the thing itself. With a simple spell that amounted to little more than magical cosmetics and dressing the part, Ione had remade her image into the one she wished to project. She still had her favorite clothes from her aborted year at college before becoming insta-mom to a teenager and twin ten-year-olds after the death of her parents. With a pair of leather pants and a black tank, a red, zip-up leather jacket and a slick of bright cherry lipstick that pulled the look together, Ione had invoked a shadow glamour.
The pert-nosed, blue-eyed blonde with loose waves around her shoulders—nothing like Ione’s gray-green eyes and straight midnight-brown and bronze ombré mane that hung down her back—was attractive in a generic way and utterly forgettable. It was a spell she’d perfected as a teenager when she’d needed an alter ego to channel the impulses of youth she hadn’t known how to deal with. Even in adulthood, however, it had its uses.
The bartenders at Bitters knew her as Kylie when she came in with this face—she’d been on the prowl enough that the bartenders knew her by name. And knew her drink, Balcones, which arrived almost as soon as she sat at the bar.
Ione set her motorcycle helmet on the stool beside her. It kept guys from hitting on her unless she wanted them to. Sitting at the end of the bar took care of the other side. She could have used a repelling spell, but too much magic in one night made her feel even worse than drinking too much.
“Is that your Nighthawk outside?” The cultured, Hugh Grant–esque British accent sent a tingling vibration through her that completely missed her spine and went straight for the genitals. God, was she really this hard up that a fancy accent was all it took?
Maintaining cool disinterest in the man standing beside her helmet’s stool, Ione took a sip of her drink before turning her head slightly in his direction. Giving him the once-over out of the corner of her eye did nothing to dispel the disconcerting vibration. A pair of golden-brown eyes to match her glass of Balcones looked back at her, pieces of tiger’s-eye quartz rimmed in dark lashes against the warm teakwood hue of his skin. Thick black hair, impeccably styled, with a charming streak of gray at the temples, completed the picture. And the expensive suit said business tourist—but the kind of business that didn’t require sitting behind a desk in an office.
She was a sucker for a sharp-dressed man. And a posh accent, apparently. But ogling hot guys in expensive suits wasn’t what she was here for. She tried to assess whether he could be part of the network of what one of Phoebe’s clients in the Public Defender’s Office had referred to as “a bunch of power-tripping dicks.”
Ione realized he was waiting for her answer. “Maybe.”
“Sorry, that wasn’t a line.” He leaned against the bar as if he had no intention of moving on and gave her a crooked smile that made the tiger’s eyes shimmer. “I just haven’t seen one of those in a while. You’ve kept it in excellent shape.”
Ione gave him a dismissive shrug. “You never know what’s under the chassis. Maybe I just keep it looking pretty and ride it into the ground.” She went back to her drink, deciding he seemed a bit too straitlaced to fit the profile she was looking for, but he didn’t take the hint.
“I doubt that. The bike shows signs of being well loved.” He moved to the open seat beside the helmet and ordered a beer.
“Do you ride?” Ione hadn’t intended to talk to him, but her vibrating pussy apparently had a different agenda.
He shook his head. “I’ve ridden on the back of a friend’s bike, but my parents would never let me ride myself.”
The corner of Ione’s mouth twitched. “You live with your parents?”
“What?” Her companion choked a bit on his beer and set the bottle down. “Oh. No, no. You’ve misunderstood me. I meant growing up. Of course, even now, my mum would probably kill me before I could get myself killed on one if I even so much as...” His voice trailed off and he looked chagrined. “I just made it worse, didn’t I? Let me try this again. I’m Dev.” He held out his hand and Ione stared at it for a moment before he let it fall. “I’m just in town for a few days. Don’t really know anyone here—and I am really sounding like an arse.”
A little smile slipped out before she caught herself.
The bartender threw Dev a challenging look. “This guy bothering you, Kylie?”
Ione shrugged. “Nah, he’s fine. Thanks, Gus. I think maybe he just needs something a little...stiffer.” She tipped her glass toward him. “Get him one of these.”
“I’m really quite fine with the beer, actually.”
“Are you?” Ione looked him up and down. “Quite?”
His dark brows drew together. “Sorry...are you making fun of my speech?”
“Absolutely not. There is absolutely nothing funny about your speech.”
Gus brought the Balcones and Dev started to object, but Ione interrupted. “It’s on me.”
With a shrug, Dev lifted his glass to Ione and nodded before taking a drink. “So, do you come here often?” He grimaced as the words left his mouth. “God, that sounded like another line. I mean a line. The first one wasn’t a line. Neither was this—I mean...there were no lines. Oh, hell.” He concentrated on the drink and Ione laughed and shook her head. “What I meant,” said Dev, “was that it seems you come here often enough for the bartender to know you.” He paused for a moment as if he’d just heard himself and rolled his eyes. “I seem to be determined to keep digging this hole deeper.” Downing his drink, he slipped off the stool and straightened his suit. “It was lovely meeting you, Kylie. Thank you so much for the beverage.”
Ione strangled the urge to laugh at the word “beverage.” “You don’t get out much, do you?”
Dev paused in the act of turning away. “Sorry, do you mean me?”
She threw him a sidelong glance. “I’m pretty sure Gus’s job gives him plenty of opportunities to hit on women. So, yes, I meant you.”
The warm hue of his skin became even warmer. “I really wasn’t hitting on you—”
Ione turned on her stool and leaned back with her elbows propped against the bar. “My God, you’re adorably awkward—Dev, was it? Do they make them all like you across the pond?”
She seemed to have rendered him speechless.
Dev glanced around as if trying to find the actual person she was talking to before laughing at himself and shaking his head, the tension of his stiff posture finally easing. “I don’t think they make any more like me anywhere, thankfully. I am rather dreadful at this, aren’t I?”
Ione gave him a wry smile. “So you admit you were hitting on me.”
Dev looked down at his feet with a smile, rubbing the back of his neck. “I might have done. Just a bit.” That little vibration inside her began to quiver once more, like a tuning fork buzzing with a faint, pleasant note.
Ione swiveled around toward the bar and raised a finger as Gus glanced in her direction from the other end where he was ringing someone up. “One more over here, Gus, when you get the chance.” She looked back at Dev, still standing there regarding her with a quizzical smile. Those eyes were really unfair. No one needed eyes that incredible. “Well? You in?”
Dev eased himself back onto the stool and smoothed back the gray curls at his temples with a grin. “I’m not sure what I’m in for, precisely, but I believe that I am, in fact, ‘in.’”
Ione finished off her Balcones. “The ride, of course.”
Dev paused with his hand on the glass Gus had set in front of him. “I’m not sure it’s the wisest idea to be riding a motorbike after imbibing alcohol.”
She rolled her eyes and Dev’s cheeks went scarlet. He lowered his head over his drink and paid great attention to it as he sipped. With her elbow on the bar and her chin propped in her hand, Ione studied him. It probably wasn’t the wisest idea to be contemplating what she was contemplating, either. He was not what she was here for. But that vibration was only getting stronger.
She couldn’t take him home, though. She’d nursed her drink over the course of an hour and she had a sobriety elixir that allowed her to ride safely regardless, but she couldn’t exactly explain the elixir to this charming, awkward stranger who had her halfway to climaxing without even touching her. Or even knowing he was doing it. Which was what made her want to get to the other half so damn bad. She had a feeling his witting participation in getting to that goal would be toe-curlingly, ass-numbingly incredible.
“Do you have a car?” She’d blurted the words before her non-lizard brain could stop her. And of course he had a car. Did she think he’d walked all the way here?
Dev wiped sweat from his upper lip with a sensual gesture he probably wasn’t even conscious of as he glanced up at her. “I probably shouldn’t be driving at the moment, either.”
“You’re assuming I’d even let you drive.” Ione picked an ice cube out of her emptied glass and sucked on it. It was now or never. She crunched the ice between her teeth and slipped off the stool, pulling out her wallet to leave Gus a generous tip. “It’s kind of loud in here. I thought we could talk outside.”
She headed for the door without waiting to see what his reaction was. If he didn’t follow, she’d just take the sobriety elixir and get the hell out of there. And if he did, well...
Chapter 2 (#u01760b51-3c5e-5b7c-8c5b-260a9f903794)
Dev twirled his glass in the ring of condensation on the bar, avoiding looking toward the door. He’d behaved recklessly, for reasons he couldn’t explain. Kylie wasn’t even his type. And, type or no type, he didn’t make a habit of hitting on women. As if that hadn’t been painfully obvious. He was here to gather information for his employer, not to snog strangers in pubs.
Although maybe it was a perfectly reasonable response to the pressure he was under. It was his first solo assignment, and if he didn’t get this thing right, he could lose everything he’d worked for. He supposed the inclination to let off a little steam before he got down to business was to be expected. Or maybe he was just letting Kur get to him.
It was the name he’d given the thing that coiled at the base of his brain—or more likely the base of his cock.
Simply put, Kur was a demon. It had been part of Dev since his first disastrous attempt at conjuring. The demon had been caged by Dev’s mentor, the first witch he’d been apprenticed to. Though, Simon, it turned out, had been something more than a witch. By all appearances a kindly white-haired elder, Simon had indulged in arcane arts that would have horrified most conventional practitioners. He’d trusted Dev with his secrets and Dev, in turn, had trusted him implicitly. But dabbling with the dark arcane and believing one could control such forces was a fool’s errand. Simon had lost his life trying to tame Kur—and Dev had lost his soul.
Dev had only been nineteen when the demon had fused with him because of his foolish attempt to call it as Simon lay bleeding from the wounds Kur had inflicted on him. He’d tried to put it back in its cage—and had woken in hospital three days later, his back shredded and his memory of that morning gone. It was only months later that he realized the marks on his back were where the demon had clawed its way in to take up permanent residence inside him.
Dev set down the glass with a decisive thump against the bar. Kur wasn’t in control of him.
He headed out to his rental car, keys in hand. He would politely decline if Kylie was actually out there waiting for him. Which he sincerely doubted she would be. She’d probably just been having a laugh at his expense. Either way, he’d have to take a chance on driving back to the hotel with a couple of drinks under his belt. It was a straight shot down the highway, which had been mostly empty when he’d come this way. And he was fairly certain that if he lingered at the bar any longer to make sure his blood alcohol level was sufficiently lowered, it would end up becoming much higher instead. Kur never let him off that easy.
Outside in the parking lot under the solenoid lamps, the red-leather-clad blonde was leaning against the passenger door—no, the driver’s door—of his rental, arms folded across her chest. She’d unzipped the red coat. Bollocks.
“I’m afraid I need to make an early night of it” was what he’d intended to say as he approached the car. Instead he leaned one shoulder against the door beside her and said, “Hey.”
Kylie gave him a sly smile. “Thought you’d changed your mind.”
“Well, I haven’t really made up my mind—about anything in particular.”
“Haven’t you?” She wasn’t giving an inch, this one.
Dev tried to talk himself out of it. This really was the worst idea. Instead he found he’d leaned closer to her. He contemplated the cherry-bomb red of her lips for a moment before they both moved together in unison, his palm sliding behind her neck and her fingers slipping around his and into the hair at his nape. And then a blazing spark of desire shot up from the base of his spine and skittered along his skin like fire as their lips came together.
Dev rolled across her, his body pressing her into the cold metal, and Kylie moaned into his mouth, making his cock granite, her hands sending shivers through him as they roamed over his back beneath the suit jacket. Those hands were coming dangerously close to the ugly knot of scar tissue above his sacrum, and Dev reached behind his back and grabbed her wrists, pinning them beside her against the car. The aquamarine eyes almost seemed to flash green with warning, and Dev let go as Kylie stiffened against him.
He thought he’d blown it, and he drew back, but her hands had gone to the buckle of his belt, yanking it open, and she’d unzipped his pants before he could recover himself and grab for her hands once more. “We can’t do this here.”
Kylie was breathing hard, her rising chest drawing his gaze to the tight peaks of her nipples beneath the cotton vest. “Then open the door.”
Dev let out a soft groan as she reached into his pocket and pulled out the keys, dangling them in front of him. He hadn’t done it in a car since he was a teenager.
Kylie raised a questioning eyebrow and, when he didn’t object, hit the unlock button on the fob and climbed into the backseat.
Some small part of him was still trying to be rational, but the leather hugging that perfect arse smothered the last of his rational thought. Kylie turned and pulled him inside, and Dev felt light-headed and intoxicated as he fell against her, but it had nothing to do with the alcohol he’d drunk. There was something about her skin against his that seemed to send little electric shocks along the surface, further incensing his baser impulses. Her hands were at his fly once more, and Dev groaned more loudly as she slipped in her hand and took hold of him, wrapping her fingers around the almost painful heat of his shaft.
He lowered his mouth to her breast, sucking the hard nipple right through the fabric, and Kylie breathed in sharply, her hand tightening on his cock, letting her breath out in a soft, plaintive moan. After sliding the strap of the shirt down her arm until he’d drawn the collar below her breast, Dev closed his mouth once more over the black lace of the bra and sucked her in, thrusting involuntarily into her hand at the taste of her skin through the rough lace. Kylie’s legs wrapped around his hips as she moaned and squirmed, pressing herself up into his mouth, her tight grip sliding against the head of his cock.
Dev groaned, rocking into her hand. The damn bra had to go. He prodded at the lace, higher brain function completely gone, and tore it open, freeing the sodden nipple so he could get his mouth around it without interference. The high-pitched noise Kylie made, along with the rapid motions of her hand, brought him dangerously close to the edge.
He put a hand on her wrist, pulling his mouth from her breast with a slick pop. “You have to stop,” he gasped. “I’m going to come.”
Kylie’s fingers unclenched. “Have you got a condom?”
“Condom?” Dev tried to make his brain work. “I don’t think so.” He needed his mouth on her skin.
Kylie made a growling noise of frustration in her throat. Tightening her legs around his hips, she swiveled suddenly, flipping him onto his back on the seat cushion.
Dev reached for her damp nipple, but she shoved him back and shimmied downward, swallowing his cock before he could do more than groan in surprise. Surprise was quickly supplanted by even deeper groans of pleasure as he rocked into her mouth, feeling the slippery heat of her lips and tongue sliding over him, and he came swiftly, gripping the seatback beside him with a shout as she swallowed it all.
As he lay back, his entire body going limp with release, Kylie zipped up her jacket, swinging her feet through the door he realized he hadn’t even latched, and climbed out.
Dev struggled to sit up, hampered by his state of undress and the fuzzy post-ejaculatory brain cloud. “Kylie?” The door swung shut. Dev scrambled to put himself together and crawled across the seat to open it just in time to see her fasten her helmet and swing her leg over the Nighthawk, kick-start the engine and drive away.
* * *
Halfway down Highway 89A, Ione realized she hadn’t taken the sobriety elixir. She pulled off to the side of the road and took the little vial out of her pocket, popping the cork and downing it swiftly. As soon as she had, the postmagical hangover kicked in, along with a dose of mortifying reality. Mother of God. Ione groaned into her gloved hands. What had she been thinking? At least he was only passing through and there was no chance she’d run into him again around town. Not that he’d know her if she did, but it would be awkward enough even if she was the only one aware of what they’d done together.
Mortification aside, she was no closer to exposing Carter’s sick friends. If Dev was in town to hook up with a call girl—even one of the nonmetaphysical variety—he hadn’t acted like it. She should have ignored her out-of-control hormones and stuck to the script she’d written for herself, keeping her eye out for one of the club patrons who fit the bill.
She shook off the glamour as soon as she got home, anxious to get out of her sweaty clothes and into a hot bath. Undressing while the tub filled, she paused for a moment at the sight of the ruined bra in the mirror as she drew the top over her head. The memory of how it had gotten that way sent that frisson of vibration through her once more. The touch of his mouth on hers had been like a narcotic rush, but when she’d felt his tongue on her breast, she’d nearly climaxed. And, God, what a climax that would have been. She could feel it just out of reach even now and she moaned involuntarily.
Ione touched her fingertips to her lipstick-smeared lips. She wasn’t used to seeing herself like this. Usually she cleaned up before dismissing the glamour, because it was a bit unsettling to see the remnants of another face on her actual face. It was dishonest and a sort of dissociative game she wasn’t proud of, but it was a defense mechanism she’d learned long before she’d started hunting Carter’s accomplices. Sometimes she needed the freedom to be someone else. Because Ione Carlisle did not behave like this. Couldn’t behave like this. She had to keep things together. So she’d split herself apart.
After washing off the makeup, she tossed the bra in the trash with a little growl of disappointment. It had been her favorite. Do not think about how it got that way again. But she was already thinking it as she wound her hair up into a loose bun and stepped into the fragrant, foaming bath. The water was a bit too hot, but the sting of it felt good. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the built-in headrest, Dev’s charming accent murmuring in her head. Her fingers slipped down between her legs and she indulged in a little mental replay, the stroke of her own hand making up for what he’d neglected, while hot water and patchouli-rose bubbles sloshed against her nipples as a stand-in for Dev’s sensuous mouth.
The climax made her cry out and she nearly swallowed a mouthful of bathwater and bubble bath as she slipped down the edge of the tub with the release of the tension she’d been holding in her legs. Not nearly as satisfying as actually having that sweet cock inside her, but still one heck of an orgasm.
Ione opened her eyes with a sigh and made a mental note to always carry her own condoms when she went out on a glamour bender. Even if she wasn’t planning on having sex, it was only smart.
The bath and the orgasm had made her nicely sleepy, and Ione fell into bed later without bothering to dress, snuggling under the down comforter while the light patter of autumn rain played against the roof. She fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow and, for the first time in weeks, managed not to have a single nightmare about Carter Hamilton.
Chapter 3 (#u01760b51-3c5e-5b7c-8c5b-260a9f903794)
The chime of her calendar notification in the morning reminding her of the Covent summonses brought her temporarily forgotten troubles crashing back. Time to face the music.
She tried to tell herself she was just being paranoid as she stroked her razor over her legs a bit aggressively as a proxy for the source of her frustration. Though it wasn’t really paranoia when a necromancer had gone to such elaborate lengths to inveigle his way into the Covent’s midst. Carter had spent years on his deception, becoming a respected member of the Phoenix branch of the Covent. He’d come to Sedona as part of a convention of the Regional Conclave to deal with the sudden rash of lingering shades of the recent dead in the area—shades, it turned out, that Carter himself had been trapping here.
Ione let out a sharp exclamation as the razor bit into the tender flesh at her ankle. Blood dripped onto the white marble tile like garnet beads scattering from a broken rosary—blood from the veins of a demon.
That was the crux of it. Carter had targeted her because of something she hadn’t even known she possessed. She had been the last to know and the last to believe that she was a descendant of the most ancient of demons. She was a daughter of Lilith. And the Lilith blood was what Carter had coveted, the magic ingredient that would give him the power to command the dead. Phoebe had been his ultimate target, but he’d used Ione to set her up.
Despite the way they’d found out about it, Phoebe had seemed to take the news of their heritage in stride. Unlike Ione, she hadn’t spent years struggling to reconcile the practice of magic with a belief in God. But everything was easy for Phoebe. She’d walked away from the church and embraced her gift years ago without a backward glance. If you could call being a way station for the recently deceased a gift.
Ione touched her finger to one of the drops of blood on her ankle, holding the tiny red orb on her fingertip under the cool white glow of the LED bulbs around the mirror. She concentrated on the drop until nothing else existed, the convex surface glistening like a miniature crystal ball in crimson in which her reflection was inverted. An angel on the head of a pin. Or a demon.
With a murmured incantation, she set the ruby bead floating above her fingertip. It was a simple trick, one of the first she’d learned. A trick for slumber parties when she was a girl. Light as a feather, stiff as a board. She’d thought then it was her own affinity for magic that had made it come so easily to her. It was because of that affinity that she’d started on the path that had led her to the Covent.
She’d come to believe in magic as a gift, and an art to be learned, not some kind of transgressive aberration. But this tainted blood was where her magical aptitude had come from, not hours of practice and months of apprenticeship; not innate talent. Not a gift from God.
Even so, it had allowed her to do what she loved. And if the Covent was going to take that away from her, she intended to walk into the temple as Ione Carlisle, high priestess of the Sedona Coventry, with her head held high.
She dressed in a crisp, white blouse and slim-cut black pants fresh from the dry cleaner’s, topped with a black, flared, knee-length frock coat with delicate gray pinstripes. Presenting a confident, authoritative air was crucial in maintaining the respect of her coven, and Ione never left the house without making sure she was representing the office of high priestess with the utmost solemnity—when she left in her own face, at any rate. A light layer of foundation, a pale smudge of blush, a swipe of mascara across her bottom lashes and a dab of clear, matte gloss across her lips conveyed both professionalism and a certain understated grace.
* * *
The parking lot of Covent Temple was full when she arrived. As Calvin had implied, every member of the Sedona Coventry must have received a summons. Yet the Covent hadn’t seen fit to inform their high priestess. Tears slammed against the backs of her eyes as she paused inside the atrium, and she dug her fingernails into her palms to keep them from going any farther. This was it. She was going to lose everything. Carter Hamilton had kneecapped her from behind bars without even trying.
Ione deepened her breath and exhaled the frailty of ego. She’d been elected to serve the needs of the magical community, not as some kind of merit badge or status symbol. If what the coven needed to heal from Carter’s betrayal was for Ione to step down as high priestess, she would do it graciously. Even if it meant collapsing into a quivering heap on her bathroom floor when she got home and sobbing until she was sick. And then picking herself up and getting a job in the real world.
When she entered the temple, the rest of the coven members were seated on the comfortable benches that lined the aisles. The temple had been built with much the same design as a Catholic church—the Covent’s origins steeped in the religion from which it had emerged—but its pews were for comfort not worship. So maybe this wasn’t a ritual defrocking, after all; if they meant to perform any kind of ceremony, they’d be gathered in a formal circle at the altar.
All eyes turned to her as she came up the aisle—including a pair that were a glittering tiger’s-eye golden brown.
Ione stopped still, blood rushing to her cheeks as well as to other more inconvenient and intimate places. It was impossible, but there he was, seated among them, just a little apart from the rest: last night’s epic bad judgment. When he rose, the others rose with him.
The golden-brown eyes widened slightly at the sight of her, and she was certain for a mortifying instant that he’d somehow seen through the glamour last night. He knew exactly who she was. But the expression was gone just as quickly with no hint of recognition in his eyes, only grim determination.
“Dione Carlisle?” He’d pronounced her given name as “Dee-ohn”—which was the reason she’d changed it.
She willed herself to behave like someone who hadn’t just run smack into the man she’d sucked off in a parking lot the night before while wearing another woman’s face. “I go by Ione, actually. But I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” Her cheeks throbbed at the unfortunate word choice, and he studied her with a peculiar expression.
With a slight, formal bow, he held out his hand. “Dharamdev Gideon. The Leadership Council sent me.” Ione’s heart sank. So this was her replacement, after all.
His skin tingled with magical energy as she shook his hand. She should have recognized it last night, the vibrational hum his proximity—and his touch—had set off inside her. It was magic—ordinary magical ability and not the pulsing tremor of some karmic sexual connection. She tried to ignore how the warm vibration of his skin touched off that answering warmth inside her that was decidedly more carnal than spiritual. And to ignore the enticing scent of his skin.
Realizing she’d held his hand a moment longer than necessary, Ione released it.
His expression masked, Dev clasped his hands behind his back, his deep-charcoal suit obviously tailored, as it accommodated his movements with perfect ease. “I’m the Covent assayer. I assume they told you I was coming.”
Ione tried to make sense of the words. She’d thought for sure he was the new interim high priest. But maybe he was just some kind of number-cruncher or efficiency expert. Maybe the world wasn’t ending.
“No, I’m afraid they didn’t, Mr. Gideon. Assayer...what is that, exactly?”
Dev cleared his throat and drew himself up tall as he straightened his raw silk tie in dark teal, his face expressing disapproval—and a touch of what looked suspiciously like disgust. “The Covent seeks to determine what role you may have played in the infiltration of the necromancer Carter Hamilton. I’m here to evaluate your failure of leadership, Miss Carlisle, and to decide on an appropriate punishment.” His cheeks seemed to color, but only for an instant. “Penalty.”
The furious heat in Ione’s cheeks was undoubtedly far more obvious. The Covent leaders apparently intended to treat her like a naughty child. The sense of resignation and grief at what she’d believed she was about to lose was quickly giving way to umbrage.
“I see.” Ione put her hands in the pockets of her coat to keep the angry tremble from showing. “I take it my account of the events is in question. I suppose that’s not entirely a surprise, given that none of the Council members was here to witness what happened. But the police accepted my account, Mr. Gideon. And Mr. Hamilton himself confessed that he alone was responsible for his actions. I’m sure any of the members of my coven can tell you what an act he put on, how he fooled us all.”
She glanced at her fellow coven members to be sure they were still on her side. A few looked embarrassed but no one was avoiding her gaze.
“I’m not proud of being fooled, and I’ll accept whatever censure the Covent deems fit to mete out for that failing, but I can assure you, Mr. Gideon, that I did nothing unethical.”
Dev gave her a condescending smile. “I will, of course, be interviewing every member of the coven at length. But by your own account, your actions were anything but ethical. You used unauthorized magical influence on a Covent member—”
“A Covent member who happened to be a necromancer, Mr. Gideon. Who was in the act of attempting to murder my sister and another member of my coven.”
“Unauthorized influence.” The gemstone eyes seemed to crackle with intensity. “There are no exceptions to this rule. Rafael Diamante subdued him with the very necromancy of which you’ve accused Hamilton, and it appears from your account that you helped Diamante do it.”
Ione’s mouth dropped open and she had to work to get her jaw to function normally. And to respond without screaming. “You’re not actually suggesting Carter Hamilton is innocent?”
“I’m not suggesting anything, Miss Carlisle. I’m merely explaining to you, since you seem to be having difficulty with the concept, that you took actions that are greatly frowned upon by the Covent. And a full investigation is more than warranted to determine exactly what happened here and who is culpable.” Whatever trick of the light had made him seem so damnably attractive a moment before, his smug condescension had managed to shake Ione loose of it. Now he just looked like a pompous jerk.
He glanced around at the others as if just remembering their presence and let out a sigh. “I trust that you’ll all cooperate fully with my investigation. I’d like to begin with brief, preliminary interviews with each of you, no more than ten or fifteen minutes, before Miss Carlisle and I sit down to discuss her account at length.” Dev turned back to Ione. “I hadn’t expected you to attend this preliminary session.” His frown expressed disapproval of whoever had leaked the news. “Since I may be a few hours, it might be best if you leave and return later.” He took out his phone, poised to make an entry. “If you’d give me your mobile number, I’ll call you when the interviews are completed.”
“I don’t have a ‘mobile’ number.” She couldn’t help echoing his British pronunciation. Ione fixed her gaze on him as he looked up, daring him to mock her for being a Luddite. She actually did have a cell phone—for emergencies—but she was rather proud of the fact that she hadn’t succumbed to the pressure to carry the phone about with her. “I don’t need to reach anyone that urgently and anyone who needs me knows to reach me at my home number.”
She took a book from her bag and turned to take a seat beneath one of the stained-glass windows. “I’ll just sit and read while I wait.” The glass depicted the tongue-thrusting goddess Kali. Ione hadn’t chosen it on accident.
“Miss Carlisle.” Dev hadn’t moved, his brows drawn together in consternation when she glanced up from her bench. “I’d prefer not to have any...undue influence on the accounts of the others.”
Ione glared daggers of ice at him. “I beg your pardon?”
Dev seemed to blanch as if only now aware of his choice of words. “I mean, it would be better if none of the coven members were to discuss their versions of the events with you prior to our interviews.”
She let out an astonished and offended laugh. “You think I’m going to coach them, Mr. Gideon? You don’t know a thing about me or my coven if you imagine for one moment that I’d tell anyone here to lie for me—or that any of them would.”
Chatoyant eyes glittered dangerously in the candlelight. “Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? I don’t know anything about you or your coven. That’s what I’m here to assess. There’s a process and protocol that must be followed.”
Ione shrugged and opened her book. “Then follow it. I pledge a solemn oath before Kali beside me, Mr. Gideon, that I will sit here quietly and read and not ‘influence’ anyone in any way.”
He was still staring at her. She could feel the indignation radiating from him in waves as she continued to ignore him until he finally sighed his disapproval and gestured to one of the coven members to accompany him to the vestry behind the altar.
Self-satisfied prick didn’t know whom he was dealing with. She’d sit here all day if she felt like it—even if he didn’t deign to talk to her at all.
A beam of sunlight through the window dappled the pages of her book with vivid reds and golds. Not the best reading light, but she was reading the same four or five words over and over again anyway, unable to make English out of them, her heart still pounding with anger—and more than a little anxiety.
“Is this seat taken?”
Ione glanced up to find the newest member of the coven smiling at her. Fresh and eager, Margot had apprenticed to an elderly member who’d decided to retire a few months ago. Ione hadn’t gotten to know her yet. Not that Ione ever really got to know anyone. Once she’d been anointed as high priestess, it seemed wiser to keep her personal and coven lives separate. As the disaster of dating Carter had proved.
Ione smiled back, grateful for the overture. “It isn’t, but aren’t you afraid I’ll accidentally influence you?”
Margot sat beside her, crossing her ankles beneath a pair of multicolored paisley leggings peeking through a sheer black skirt. Her relaxed, fun sense of personal style was the polar opposite of Ione’s carefully conservative attire. Besides the responsibility of representing the coven as its high priestess, Ione had always feared being judged as perpetuating some kind of metaphysical trend. Sedona had a reputation for being a little out there, and, while many of the merchants were perfectly genuine, some of the more touristy businesses exploited that reputation for maximum effect.
Margot crossed her arms over her ample bosom. “Don’t worry about Chauncey in there. Maybe he just can’t let go of that stick up his butt because it’s so damn tight.” She grinned as Ione nearly strangled on the startled burst of laughter she was trying to suppress. “Man, you didn’t see that thing walking away, did you?” Margot fanned herself. “Kinda makes you wish we could bring back the Great Rite.”
Now that was something Ione didn’t need to be thinking about. The image of rolling about on the floor in front of the altar with a stripped-down Dev Gideon was a little more than she could handle. Not that the Great Rite was really about rolling around on the floor having an uninhibited orgy, per se—God, she really needed to get laid more often. Ione shuddered, realizing the last time had been with Carter. And she did not find Dev Gideon attractive, she reminded herself. His personality had ruined it.
“And speaking of Rafe Diamante...” Margot winked. “How’s your sister Phoebe doing?”
Ione couldn’t hold back the laugh this time. “Yeah, my little sister pretty much hit the jackpot with that one, didn’t she?”
“Not that I was trying to get into that boy’s pants or anything, but I know quite a few women who are quietly weeping about not getting into those pants.” Margot shook her head ruefully. “All joking aside, do you think he’ll be coming back to the Covent?”
Ione closed her book. “No, I think he’s had enough of organized practice.” She was careful not to mention that, thanks to Phoebe’s demon blood awakening his inner Quetzalcoatl, Rafe now had a tendency to sprout wings and get a bit scaly when he practiced ritual. Not that Phoebe seemed to mind that this, apparently, also included the raising of sexual energy.
Ione knew just a little too much about her sister’s sex life these days. Not so much because they’d gotten particularly closer since the Carter incident, but mostly because the twins were busybodies and couldn’t resist sharing juicy tidbits with Ione after calling Phoebe to pester her for details. To hear Rhea and Theia tell it, Phoebe hadn’t left her house in weeks—because she was having trouble walking.
“Well, if you talk to him, let him know we all miss him. And not just because of his pants.” Margot smiled, putting a hand on Ione’s shoulder. “And, seriously, don’t worry about this investigation. We all know you didn’t do anything wrong. We’ve got your back.”
“Thanks.” Unexpectedly, Ione had to work not to tear up. It was nice to have a vote of confidence. “That means more than you know.”
She felt Dev’s approach without looking up, as haughty, self-righteous energy filled the aisle of the nave. “I thought you were going to read quietly, Miss Carlisle.”
Margot jumped up. “Sorry. My fault. I was getting a little antsy sitting around. But don’t worry. I didn’t let her give me the whammy.”
Ione choked back another laugh and had to pretend to be focusing on her book once more, unable to look either of them in the eye.
Dev tried to vibe her with a folded-arm stance of paternal disapproval that she pretended not to see from the corner of her eye until he gave up. “And what is your name, Miss...?”
“Margot Kelley.”
“Miss Kelley, why don’t you accompany me to the vestry and we’ll have a little chat.”
Ione rolled her eyes. What was he, a headmaster in his day job?
The first interviewee, Calvin, passed her with a nod and an encouraging smile on the way out. That was two votes of confidence, anyway.
As she started to make an actual effort to put the proceedings out of her mind and read her book, a strangled cry of alarm came from the antechamber, and Calvin came stumbling back inside.
Ione was on her feet in an instant. “Calvin? What is it? What happened?” She stepped into the aisle and put an arm around his shuddering shoulders.
“On the door,” he choked out, looking ill.
Dev Gideon had come swiftly at the noise and he marched past them with determined steps, Margot following, bemused. Calvin had sunk onto one of the benches, too horrified by whatever he’d seen to articulate it.
Ione started toward the doors just as Margot hurried back inside. “What is it? What’s going on?”
“You don’t want to see it.” Margot shuddered, blinking back tears. “Somebody—some sicko nailed a dead cat to the door.”
Chapter 4 (#u01760b51-3c5e-5b7c-8c5b-260a9f903794)
She was still high priestess of this coven, and it was her duty to protect it. Ione squeezed Margot’s hand before ignoring her advice and heading into the atrium. Dev stood in the doorway, his body framed in sunlight, looking down at the paper in his hand.
He turned as Ione neared the door and shook his head. “There’s no need to look. Someone was obviously going for shock value, and we don’t all need nightmares.”
“This is my coven, Mr. Gideon, and I’m not some delicate flower.”
Dev caught her arm as she tried to pass him and the surge of vibrational energy struck her once more—not sexual this time, thank heaven, but a powerful bolt like a warning that stopped her in her tracks.
“Let go of me.”
“Sorry.” Dev released her, looking shaken. “I’m just trying to spare you any more trauma than is necessary.”
“Necessary?” Exactly what kind of trauma would be necessary?
Dev held out the note. “I believe you were the target of this little act of terrorism.”
Ione took it, unable to resist one last glance beyond him to the mangled thing that lay on the stone walkway. She looked swiftly away. Maybe he was right about this. Whatever the aim, she had no doubt this was an escalation of the message that had been intended with the dead birds left on her porch every morning for the past week. She’d been so focused on the summonses she hadn’t even noticed the absence of this morning’s “gift.”
Her head swam as she tried to concentrate on the words written on a piece of parchment in the careful, talented hand of a calligrapher—in what appeared to be blood.
“It’s ink.” Dev guessed at her assumption. “They obviously wanted it to look like blood, but it’s ink.”
Ione breathed a little more easily and read the note aloud. “‘Out of love for the truth and from desire to elucidate it, I, Nemesis, intend to defend the following statements.’” She glanced up at Dev. “This nut is doing Martin Luther’s 95 Theses?”
Dev nodded grimly. “Just ten, but they’re what I believe Americans would call ‘doozies.’”
Ione continued. “‘One. When the Covent was established in the Canton du Valais in the Swiss Confederation in 1533, its aim was to illuminate the arcane as a complement to the glory of God, not to profane it.
“‘Two. The practice of the Sacred Craft within the tenets of the Covent is the antithesis of the practice of evil.
“‘Three. The thirteen founding families believed in purity of heart, purity of mind, purity of body, and purity of soul.
“‘Four. There is therefore no place in the Covent for those who harbor evil within them.
“‘Five. The high priestess of this coven has brought the stain of impure blood onto this body.’”
Ione’s voice trailed off. The remaining theses were more than she could bring herself to read aloud.
6. High Priestess Ione Carlisle, being of one of the venerable Covent families, has hidden the shameful secret that kept the Carlisle family from the ranks of the Covent for nearly four centuries: that she is of the blood of the accursed demoness Lilith.
7. Impure blood cannot be tolerated, and the body of the Covent must be cleansed.
8. Let her who pollutes the purity of the Covent be anathema and accursed.
9. To allow Ione Carlisle to continue as the high priestess of the Sedona Coventry is an act of heresy against the Covent.
The parchment shook in Ione’s hands.
10. She who brings evil into the halls of the Covent shall be admitted only into the halls of death and hell.
Dev quietly took it from her. “The writer of these words is obviously mentally unhinged, and the Covent doesn’t tolerate such harassment. But you’ll forgive me if I ask...is there any truth to the accusation?”
Glancing up, expecting judgment and derision in his eyes, Ione was surprised to see compassion and concern instead. “That I carry the blood of a demon in my veins?” The weight of every self-recriminatory thought she’d been having for weeks pressed down on her. Every fear she’d had of losing everything was coming true. And she deserved it. She was tainted. “If my sister Theia’s research is to be believed, I’m afraid the answer is yes.”
She felt deflated and empty after holding the secret inside for so long. Spoken aloud, it seemed commonplace, something that couldn’t possibly mean the end of everything she’d known. But it was.
Ione drew back her shoulders. “I’ll save you the time and bother, Mr. Gideon. I just need to collect a few things before I go. If you want to have someone accompany me to make sure I’m not stealing any Covent property, I’ll understand.”
“Collect a few things?” Dev frowned. “Where are you going?”
Ione wrinkled her nose at him. “I—home, Mr. Gideon. I’d rather go quietly without a public spectacle. My coven deserves better, even if I don’t.”
Dev lifted an eyebrow. “Miss Carlisle, you seem to be operating under the misapprehension that I endorse the agenda of this deranged person or persons calling themselves Nemesis and defiling the sacred grounds of this temple. I have no intention of asking you to step down. Not for this.
“Depending on the outcome of my investigation, once concluded, if my recommendations to the Covent administration include electing a new high priest or priestess, it will be because of your involvement with the necromancer. Not because of some antiquated notion of impure blood.”
Where had the smug prick gone? Was he actually being nice?
“I’m confused. What this ‘Nemesis’ nut says is true—my ancestor was found guilty of having demon blood, and when a member of my family was discovered to have married one of her descendants, the Carlisles were expelled from the Covent. Doesn’t the Covent frown on dark magic?”
Dev’s eyes were piercing. “Do you practice dark magic?”
“If you’re asking about necromancy, of course not. But my affinity for magic clearly isn’t born of goodness and light. It’s...demonic.” The word felt bitter on her tongue.
“There’s a world of difference between demon ancestry and what modern religion defines as demonic. It so happens that demonology was my area of focus at university. What we call a ‘demon’ these days is more accurately a malevolent energy. Anyone can cultivate such negative energy. One doesn’t have to be ‘possessed’ by some ancient spirit. In fact, it’s rather racist to suggest that what’s in a person’s blood should make them inherently evil, don’t you think?”
“I...hadn’t given it much thought.” She’d given it a lot of thought, actually. She’d thought of nothing else since Theia and Rhea had broken the news to her. But the way Dev was looking at her with those luminous eyes was making her feel as though she’d said something inappropriate and offensive.
“Don’t get me wrong, Miss Carlisle. There may still be consequences for withholding this information from the Covent leadership. I am obligated to report it, after all. The Leadership Council may not all be quite as enlightened on the subject, and not disclosing this information when you learned of it may be viewed as a breach of faith.” He carefully rolled up the parchment and made a gesture toward the remains. “Look, why don’t I clean this up? And then you and I can talk at length—if you don’t mind sticking around for a bit. I can interview the rest of the coven members at another time.”
This was exactly the opposite of the reaction she’d expected from him. A few minutes ago he’d all but accused her of making up the accusations of necromancy against Carter and practicing it herself. And now he was trying to reassure her that her demon blood didn’t make her evil?
Dev glanced around. “Do you keep any rubbish bags on the premises? Preferably dark, heavy-duty? I’d rather not carry that about in something transparent and have the others seeing it.”
Ione studied him and nodded with an intake of breath. “I think there are some gardening supplies in the basement.” Though she didn’t exactly relish going down there. It was where one of Carter’s victims had been stowed, and the smell had been impossible to get out completely no matter how much ventilation they’d given it. “I’ll have someone go downstairs and scare something up.”
Her conscience needled her for being a coward, but Margot was waiting inside the atrium, eager to do something to help. Ione sent her down to get the bags before reassuring the others that someone had just pulled a rather nasty prank and it was being taken care of.
On the bench farthest from the doors, Calvin sat, looking gray. Ione popped into the back office to get him a bottle of water and returned to slip onto the bench beside him.
“Hey.” She handed him the water. “Mr. Gideon’s going to clean up and then the rest of you can go home. Are you okay to drive or do you want someone to give you a ride?”
Calvin took the water gratefully and shook his head as he took a sip. “I can manage. I just...don’t want to see that again, you know?”
“I know. I’m sorry you had to be the one to find it.”
“Do you think it’s...was it the necromancer?”
“Carter Hamilton?” Ione shook her head decisively. “He’s behind bars and he’s been stripped of his power. He can’t do anything to hurt us. This is just some disturbed individual who’s focused on me because of everything that’s happened. Just trying to rattle me.”
Calvin huffed. “Well, it sure as hell rattled me.” He glanced up at her, brow wrinkled with concern beneath his receding hairline. “About that night—you needed our help—Rafe needed our help—and the coven let you both down.”
Ione squeezed his forearm. “You couldn’t have known how far gone Hamilton was. None of us knew. It all turned out all right in the end, anyway, so please don’t give it another moment’s thought.”
“But we’re not going to let you down again. I just wanted you to know that. We’re all standing with you.”
Ione smiled. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Dev returned from washing his hands and dismissed the others, promising to contact them for their interviews at a later time. With the temple empty except for the two of them, there was no more putting off a one-on-one discussion.
But for the love of all that’s holy, do not think about your last one-on-one.
* * *
From the moment Ione Carlisle entered the temple, Dev had felt the ground wobbling beneath him, refusing to stabilize, as if some kind of psychic fracking operation had disrupted his equilibrium. There was something painfully familiar about her, like someone he’d met in a dream or another life, his mythical counterpart split off by a vengeful Zeus. Which was preposterous. At best, she had to be grossly incompetent as a high priestess and, at worst, she was in league with a necromancer and guilty of malfeasance. Never mind the fact that he didn’t believe in such nonsense as soul mates.
Her eyes, a grayish green, like the color of lichen or pale jade, were the most uncannily familiar part of her. When they fixed on him, he felt as if he had something on the tip of his tongue he meant to say but couldn’t quite recall it. And worse, Kur seemed to stir inside him at the sight of her as if he knew her.
“Have a seat, Miss Carlisle.” Dev sat behind the desk he realized was most likely her own, but it was important to maintain the symbolic position of authority. He couldn’t very well take her to task from the guest chair while she sat behind the large oak desk herself.
She took the empty chair without any sign of resentment. “Ms.”
“Sorry?”
“Ms. Carlisle. You keep calling me ‘miss.’ That’s considered a bit sexist and archaic here.”
“Oh. I beg your pardon. Ms. Carlisle—”
“And, frankly, that seems unnecessarily formal. Just call me Ione.”
He chose to ignore the fact that this pleased him unreasonably. “I am here in a formal capacity, but as you wish. Ione. Now that the others are gone, I wanted to get your thoughts on who amongst your coven might have reason for any kind of resentment or grudge against you.”
Her perfectly sculpted brows drew together in disapproval as she uncrossed and recrossed her legs. “Among my coven? You think one of them did that? Absolutely not. Even if they did have a grudge against me, none of them would do anything like that. I know them. It’s impossible.”
“The cat wasn’t killed by whoever put it there. At least, not directly. It was road kill, and a day or two old by the look of it.” Not to mention the smell.
“I don’t care. None of them did this.”
Dev clasped his hands on the desk. “Do any of them know of your ancestry?”
She shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of.”
“Who does?”
“My sisters. Rafe Diamante...” She paused, coloring. “And Carter Hamilton.”
“You shared that with him?”
Ione’s mouth was set in a hard line. Foolishly, he regretted being the one to provoke such displeasure on that otherwise lovely mouth.
“Shared it? I used it against him, Mr. Gideon. It’s how we managed to bind him.”
Dev hadn’t heard this detail before. “How do you mean?”
“As my report states, I tried to gather a quorum of coven members to perform the necessary ritual, but without proof of Hamilton’s necromancy, they were reluctant to interfere, particularly on the word of an outsider and in defense of a warlock.”
He nodded impatiently. “So you helped Mr. Diamante use his necromantic abilities against Mr. Hamilton. I’ve read all this.”
Her green eyes darkened. “We did not use necromancy. If you repeat that slander one more time, Mr. Gideon, I may be sorely tempted to violate the Covent doctrine against using magic for spite.”
Dev had to work not to smile. Those eyes were really wreaking havoc with his poise. “You may as well call me Dev—in the interest of not being unnecessarily formal. But I suppose I can refrain from making such judgments until my investigation is complete. Please continue.”
Ione’s expression said she thought he was full of shite. “Given that my sister Phoebe’s life hung in the balance, I reluctantly agreed to attempt to share magical energy with my younger sisters, who had just revealed their theory to me about our...enhanced blood. Despite the fact that neither of them is trained in witchcraft, I managed to raise sufficient energy with them to project a binding spell upon Carter Hamilton’s magic from several miles away. We arrived at the Diamante family home just in time to see Rafe recover his nagual from Hamilton as the result of our binding. At which time, a spirit Hamilton had enslaved entered him—of its own accord—and bound him physically, as well.”
“Nagual?” Dev wrote the unfamiliar word on the pad of paper he’d been using for his interviews. “And what is that?”
“I don’t fully understand it myself, but as Rafe explained it, it’s a sort of spirit animal representing the god Quetzalcoatl, whom Rafe claims to be descended from. He can project it outside himself in various forms—or he can take on its form himself.”
Dev glanced up from the notepad. “He transforms physically? Into what?”
Ione shifted in her chair. “He calls himself ‘quetzal.’ He retains a mostly human form, except the tattoo of Quetzalcoatl on his back becomes an extension of him physically.”
“I’m not following you. Quetzalcoatl is represented in Aztec art as a feathered serpent. You’re saying he transforms into a feathered serpent in human form? Exactly how does that work?”
“I haven’t examined him personally. It seemed a bit awkward.”
“Then how do you know he actually did it?”
Ione cleared her throat and shifted her legs again. “Because he had wings. Iridescent blue-green-and-violet-tipped wings with an eight-foot span. Couldn’t really miss them.”
The pen slipped from Dev’s fingers. “That—wasn’t in the report.”
“No.” Ione shrugged—a vulnerable, feminine gesture that Dev found endearing. “It didn’t seem relevant. The facts were that Carter appropriated Rafe’s power through necromancy, my sisters and I bound Carter’s magic and Rafe got the power back. I understand you’re determined to make me out to be the villain of this piece because I was briefly involved with Carter Hamilton, but the fact is that he did what he did on his own and I was just stupid enough to fall for his act.”
There was a weariness in her eyes that couldn’t be faked. He wanted to believe she was telling the truth. But Dev had to be objective. He couldn’t afford to let his basest instincts color his opinions in this investigation. He had a responsibility to the Covent. Several members of the Leadership Council had been against his appointment, and they were watching him like hawks, just waiting for him to screw up. Dev wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction. And he would not be ruled by the demon. Tales of winged reptiles notwithstanding. Though he was going to have to interview this Diamante fellow for more than just his version of the facts of that night.
“I appreciate your candor, Miss—Ms.—Ione. So if I understand correctly, Carter Hamilton was made aware of your unique bloodline because he felt the power you and your sisters were able to project?”
Ione’s gaze slid away from his. “Not exactly. I mean, I’m sure he must have felt it. But evidently he targeted me because he’d researched our family. He knew my sister’s blood would fulfill the requirement necessary to awaken Rafe’s quetzal power so he could steal it from him. He referred to Phoebe as a divine scion, as Rafe himself claims to be. In Carter’s mind, I suppose, Lilith is a goddess and not a demoness.”
Dev inclined his head. “If you subscribe to certain pagan theories and academic speculation, Lilith may be equated with a number of ancient Semitic deities. It’s a matter of perspective, I suppose. One man’s demon is another man’s divine. Or woman’s.” He cleared his throat. “Be that as it may, this additional information about Carter Hamilton is significant. If he has an obsession with your ancestry, I think it’s quite likely he’s behind this morning’s act of terrorism.”
Ione didn’t seem surprised. “You think he’s orchestrating this from behind bars?”
“He seems the obvious suspect and the only one with evident motive to want to harm you. This Nemesis may be an alias he’s using or it could be the alias of someone he’s convinced to act on his behalf. He can’t use magic against you from prison because of the Covent’s binding, but, from what you’ve told me, it seems he’s rather persuasive.”
Ione’s cheeks flushed pink. “Most psychopaths are.”
“Indeed.” Dev made a note to look into how to get a record of Hamilton’s visitors and correspondence. “In the meantime, this seems most likely to be harassment and not a threat. But you should probably take some extra precautions. Perhaps you could stay with one of your sisters for a bit?”
“I’m quite sure I can take care of myself, Mr. Gideon.”
He gave her a wry smile. “Dev.”
Ione’s jade green eyes flickered with an expression he couldn’t interpret. “Dev. I assure you, I’m perfectly capable.”
“I don’t doubt it. As for your ancestry, let me assure you that I haven’t come here to dig up reasons to malign you before the Leadership Council. My job is to determine your fitness to serve as high priestess by assessing the facts of the events surrounding Carter Hamilton’s crimes. I strongly suggest, however, that you tell them before someone else does.”
She nodded stiffly as she rose. “I’ll take that under advisement.”
Dev stood to shake her hand. As before, he felt a bit of a shock jump between her hand and his as their skin touched—just as he’d noticed with Kylie. What was this, some new idiotic tic of the demon’s to prod him into further mischief? Whatever the demon wanted, he would not be a slave to his desires.
“Thank you for cooperating in this matter. I understand that this is all very awkward and unpleasant, but I appreciate your professionalism.” Despite his annoyance with himself at his reaction to her, when Ione withdrew her hand, he felt childishly disappointed at the absence of it.
As she buttoned her coat, something about the motion reminded Dev of the way Kylie had zipped up her leather jacket before riding away last night, leaving him in the backseat of his rental car with his prick out—well satisfied though it may have been.
“I take my position as a high priestess of the Covent extremely seriously,” she was saying.
He was barely listening to her, the prospect of her disappearing into a world he wasn’t familiar with suddenly as frustrating as the disappearance of Kylie. “You said you don’t have a mobile number. How can I reach you if I need to?”
Ione picked up his pen and paper from the desk and wrote a number. “My landline. I have a machine.”
Chapter 5 (#u01760b51-3c5e-5b7c-8c5b-260a9f903794)
The disquieting flicker of energy that emanated from Dev Gideon’s skin hadn’t dissipated until Ione was beyond the temple. There was something odd about a witch who seemed to project a magical aura even when he was simply sitting still. Maybe he was glamoured. It would account for how unfairly attractive he was. But even Carter hadn’t emanated such ceaseless power. Dev was like a live wire emitting a warning hum.
The light was blinking on her answering machine when she arrived upstairs, and her insides gave a stupid little jump of anticipation, as if the message might be from Dev. Why on earth would she care if he called her? If he did, it would only be to tell her she was being removed from her position. Or worse.
She played the message as she undressed. It was from Phoebe. Funny. Phoebe hadn’t even been speaking to her for months—maybe years, if one wanted to get technical—before this mess had thrown them together. Ione had been the one leaving unanswered messages.
“Ione, I know you don’t want to be bothered right now, but something’s happened.”
She paused in pulling on her yoga pants.
“I don’t like talking on a machine. Could you please call me? This is serious. I’m kind of freaking out over here.”
Images of Theia and Rhea lying mangled on the freeway like the bodies of their parents eleven years ago seized her, and Ione sucked in her breath as if someone had punched her in the gut. No. No, please. Don’t let it be one of the twins.
She grabbed the phone and hit Phoebe’s number on speed dial. Her sister picked up immediately.
“Phoebe, it’s me. What is it? What’s happened? Are they okay?”
“They?”
“The twins. You said something happened.”
“Oh, God, no. Nothing like that. They’re fine. I mean, as far as I know. I haven’t talked to them. I wanted to talk to you first.”
The pressure squeezing her heart and lungs eased. “What, then? You said it was serious.”
“I’ve been over at Rafe’s for a few days. We brought Puddleglum with us. Thank goodness.”
Ione rolled her eyes. Phoebe treated that cat like it was her baby.
“When I got home this afternoon, there was—someone left—something...on my porch.”
Ione’s stomach clenched. “A dead cat.”
“Damn. You, too?”
“At the temple this morning. There was a note.”
“Yeah, I got a note, too. ‘Righteousness will not dwell in an unclean temple.’ I don’t even know what that means.”
“Was it signed ‘Nemesis’?”
“Maybe. The handwriting was so stylized. I think it’s written in blood. I thought it said Genesis.” A rustling sound followed before Phoebe spoke again. “Yeah, I think that’s it, after all. Nemesis. Who’s Nemesis?”
Ione sighed. “I don’t know, but the note I got was a little more detailed. Nemesis laid out a disputation in ten theses explaining why my impure blood was polluting the Covent, promising to purify the temple.”
“Oh, hell. I’m sorry.”
“Whoever he or she is, I think Nemesis is working with Carter.”
Phoebe made a sharp noise of disapproval. “Goddamn him. I thought we were done with his sorry ass.”
“Whose sorry ass?” Rafe’s deep, baritone voice came from the background.
Phoebe snorted. “One guess, babe. I’m putting you on speaker, Di.” Only her sisters got to call her that. Anyone else would find themselves on the receiving end of a palm-heel strike to the sternum.
Rafe’s voice became clearer. “You think this is Hamilton’s doing?”
Ione shrugged at the phone. “Nemesis brought up the ‘Lilith gene.’ Who else knows about it besides us? You haven’t told anyone else, have you, Phoebe?”
“Oh, shoot. You know, I did take out that full-page, coming-out ad in the Sedona Demon Times. Should I not have done that?”
Ione was used to pretending her little sister hadn’t spoken. “Besides the five of us, Carter’s the only one who knows.” She sighed. Might as well tell them about the birds. “This wasn’t the first dead animal I was gifted with, either. I’ve been finding dead crows on my doorstep.”
“Crows.” The symbolism seemed significant to Phoebe.
“Why, does that mean something?”
“That’s one of Rafe’s naguals.”
This was news to Ione. “You have more than one nagual?”
Rafe cleared his throat as though Phoebe had mentioned something indelicate. “I transformed into a crow early in the quetzal’s awakening. I believe it was a subconscious response to Hamilton using his necromantic powers to become the coyote when he was appropriating the authority of Quetzalcoatl’s nemesis, Tezcatlipoca.”
Nemesis. There was that word again.
“It does seem like Hamilton’s MO.” Rafe paused. “Why were you at the temple on a Saturday morning?”
“They sent a Covent assayer to investigate me—sort of a magical insurance claim adjuster—and he was there, along with the entire coven, when we discovered the cat.”
“No.” Phoebe managed to give that one little monosyllabic word the weight of an entire sentence.
Rafe was subdued. “I’m so sorry about all this, Ione.”
“I suppose it was inevitable. And this is not your fault, Rafe. I just wish they’d sent an actual licensed investigator so we could find out how Carter’s doing this. If he’s communicating with someone on the outside, I don’t think we have a legal right to know.” She paused. “There must be some private investigators you work with through the Public Defender’s Office, Phoebe. Maybe there’s someone you can recommend?”
“Um, yeah, about that...”
“You might as well tell her, babe.”
Ione’s entire body went tense, like it used to when Phoebe’s high school would call to tell her legal guardian about her latest trip to the principal’s office. “Tell me what?”
“I don’t work for the PD’s office anymore. I quit my job to apprentice as a private investigator.”
Ione’s blood pressure shot through the roof. “You quit your job? You spent three years getting that law degree, Phoebe. Not to mention all the time you’ve spent putting in your dues. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking practicing law while having shades jump in and out of me at random is never going to stop being a conflict of interest. Not to mention awkward in the courtroom.”
“Can’t you just forbid the shades to bother you?”
“That’s not exactly how it works. And I happen to like helping them. We’ve been over this a hundred times. I’m not giving it up. Even if I could keep them out, I won’t.”
“I didn’t mean you shouldn’t help at all. It’s just...you’re a really good lawyer, Phoebe.”
Phoebe was silent for a moment, as if Ione had shocked her. “You’ve never said that before.”
“You already know you’re good at it. Why do I have to tell you?”
Phoebe sighed. “Anyway, I can always return to practicing law if this doesn’t work out. But right now I’d say it’s damn lucky I have my investigator’s license, because I have access to the prison visitor and communication logs at the Florence State Prison.”
“Oh.” Ione smiled reluctantly. “I guess that is lucky, then.”
“I’ll take a drive down there and see what I can find out.”
“I’ve strengthened the protection spell around Phoebe and around the house,” Rafe reassured Ione before she could object. “I can come over and ward the perimeter at your place, too, if you like. My wards have a little extra kick these days with the quetzal magic.”
“Why not?” A little extra protection couldn’t hurt.
* * *
Dev was starting to think certain members of the Council had given him this assignment on purpose to smoke him out. Rumors had surrounded his mentor Simon’s death and Dev’s part in it. There was no question that something unnatural had attacked them both, but no one had quite been willing to say “demon.” At least not aloud. And now some anonymous person was making accusations about demon blood and cleansing the Covent—and Dev was right in the middle of it.
He tried to shake off the disturbing events of the day as he headed back to his hotel. Documenting the impressions he’d gathered from the day’s interviews—and the peculiar turn of events that had cut them short, he’d ended up staying at the temple much later than he’d planned.
The temple itself was a curious combination of enchanting and repelling. The temporal and spatial glamour around it to keep the general public from prying was exceptional. He hadn’t even noticed the property as he’d approached this morning—though he’d been mesmerized by the landscape, which he supposed was part of the magic the glamour merely needed to draw from—until the white neo-Gothic spires had risen from among the damp rocks looking utterly out of place.
Despite the incongruous beauty of it, he’d felt the unpleasant residue of necromancy hanging in the air about the temple as he’d followed the twisting road to the small courtyard at the center of the labyrinth. No amount of stark, unearthly white stone had been able to mask what seemed like an almost visible muddy-gray pall. He’d thought then it was the negative influence of the necromancer and his high-priestess girlfriend, but now that he’d met Ione, Dev wasn’t so sure. Perhaps the person who’d left the note and the dead cat had been hiding somewhere on the property at the time. That might have accounted for it.
But he was done thinking about those gruesome images for today. There was ordinary enchantment all around him. He’d thought the view spectacular this morning, but he’d been preoccupied with the case. Or maybe it was simply more stunning this direction. Light rain fell like an afterthought on the pillars and domes of rock lining the highway. Their fantastic orangey-red hues struck a breathtaking contrast with the cerulean sky melting into a blend of indigo and violet—like the juice of a pomegranate running into the horizon. It was as if he’d driven off the highway into the land of the Fae, otherworldly and impossibly beautiful in a way he couldn’t even articulate.
Much like his impression of Ione Carlisle.
Dev groaned. Best to nip that kind of thinking in the bud. She was the subject of his investigation and nothing more.
He tried to steer his thoughts toward a safer target—the image of Kylie driving away on her motorbike last night, leather pants supple against the shapely arse on the seat—the arse he’d let slip away because he hadn’t been adequately prepared. He’d had no business starting something with her in the first place when it came to that. He’d gone to the pub to experience the local color, playing tourist before he had to face the drudgery of his assignment. But, despite the fact that she hadn’t been his type, he couldn’t get over the odd intensity of his response to her.
He felt like he’d taken the tiniest bite of enchanted Turkish delight before losing sight of the sleigh on which the White Witch of Narnia had ridden away, only to realize he’d die without another taste of that unearthly sweet.
Dev laughed. That sugary metaphor was Kur’s influence for certain. “All right, you miserable sod. Let’s go look for the White Witch.” At least it would get his mind off Ione Carlisle.
Chapter 6 (#u01760b51-3c5e-5b7c-8c5b-260a9f903794)
Ione had hit pay dirt. She rarely put on the glamour two nights in a row, as the magic could be both exhausting and addicting, but with Carter’s campaign against her escalating from petty harassment to disturbing threats, she was more determined than ever to find out who was helping him. Rafe had finished giving the wards around her place a final infusion of quetzal magic just before dusk, giving her just enough time to perform the glamour before heading to Bitters once more.
As soon as she’d arrived she’d struck up a conversation at the bar with an off-duty cop who bragged of connections with “certain important people in the community.” He’d promised to put Kylie in touch with “an interesting crowd” looking for fun girls like herself for the parties they hosted. The braggadocio, combined with his aggressively sexual behavior, seemed promising in terms of the sort of dirtball she was looking for. She’d even dropped a few names herself, mentioning how sad she’d been when her friends Barbie Fisher and Monique Hernandez—two of Carter’s unfortunate victims—had died this past summer.
As she flirted with him, however, a familiar deep vibration—like the hum of machinery buried miles underground, the beating heart of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis—struck Ione to the core. Without glancing up, she knew Dev Gideon had entered the club. Dammit. What was he doing here again? The answer, of course, was looking for Kylie. She had to admit, she’d probably made a hell of an impression.
“Fancy meeting you here.” The cultured British accent behind her sent a delicious shiver up her spine. Which was so not cool.
She turned, prepared to make some sort of smart remark about his natty, out-of-place suit, but the sight of the white T-shirt stretched over his pecs and tucked into a pair of jeans that drew her eyes straight to his crotch left her with her mouth hanging open.
Ione closed it carefully and let her gaze travel back up to his face and the amused luster in the golden-brown eyes. “I see you got into something a little more comfortable.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I’d like to.” Damn, this boy learned fast. But Ione wasn’t going to succumb to her inappropriately pumping blood. This was the Covent’s assayer and, now that she knew it, she wasn’t about to let her pussy lead her around on a leash and do something foolish.
“Mind if I sit?”
Yes, you mind, dumbass. Do not encourage him. “Actually, I was just...” Her voice trailed off as she glanced at the seat to her left and saw that “Officer Paul” had moved on to hit on a group of giggling undergrads—probably drinking on fake IDs—at the next table. She wanted to jump up and tell them they were being creeped on by a predator, but they would only think she was trying to bad-mouth him because she was jealous that he’d switched his attention to them. And it would have blown any chance she had of getting closer to the ringleaders.
Dev had already slid onto the stool on her right, his arm so close to hers that little pulses of static electricity seemed to be flowing between them. And he smelled delicious. Without meaning to, she’d moved her arm closer.
“What are you drinking?”
For a moment she thought he’d said, “What are you thinking?” Which was a very good question.
Ione tamped down her runaway libido. “Water.”
“Keeping safety in mind, then?”
She swiveled on her stool and rested her elbow on the bar to study him. “Why? Did you come prepared to ride?” She groaned internally, her sensible self watching her speak as if it was just an observer. Her libido was threatening mutiny. This was not going to happen tonight.
Dev’s cocky smile widened into a grin. “Even brought my own helmet.”
“Is that a metaphor?” Why was she still talking?
“Do you want it to be?”
It was like she had a pulse in her pussy. Ione’s rational mind made one last, desperate attempt to rein herself in. She was going to regret this. It was one thing fooling around with some stranger in a parking lot. But this was someone she was absolutely guaranteed to see again, and not in a pleasant capacity. It wasn’t a matter of right or wrong, even. Just a matter of not being stupid. She absolutely could not do this.
Ione swung off the stool. “Well, let’s see how you sit a saddle, then, cowboy.” She was going to hell.
* * *
Dev gave Kylie’s waist the tiniest tug to set her hips squarely against his thighs as she started up the bike after he’d climbed on behind her. She’d been highly amused when he got the helmet from his rental. He hadn’t wanted to give her any opportunity to ride off and leave his arse in the dust again. He wasn’t averse to screwing in the backseat of an automobile, but it wasn’t his first choice, and he imagined it wasn’t hers, either. He’d been perfectly prepared to offer to drive to his hotel, but he’d been hoping she’d opt for her place.
He hadn’t been on a bike in years. Kur seemed quite taken with it. He could swear the little bastard was purring inside him. Lord knew, Dev felt like purring.
Kylie’s waist was warm against his palms as he held her lightly beneath her jacket while they sped through the now cloudless night. The stars were rather spectacular out here, unimpeded by bright city lights. No wonder Percival Lowell had built his observatory in the mountains near this desert. They were heading down the highway in the same direction as the temple, turning just a bit south of it onto a twisting road among the spectacular rock formations.
Another half mile up into the hills, Kylie pulled into the driveway of a white, split-level stucco. The garage door opened, admitting them smoothly and closing automatically as Kylie came to a stop and shut off the engine. She took off her helmet, shaking out her blond waves, and Dev swung off the bike behind her and followed suit—sans hair swinging.
Kylie didn’t speak as they went through a side door into the interior, but before she opened the inner door, Dev curled his arm around her waist and stopped her in her tracks to kiss down the back of her neck. She tilted her head to the side, just a slight acknowledgment that gave him greater access, letting him work his way toward the front. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and unzipped the jacket as he traced his tongue along her jawline, slipping his hands inside the leather to cup her breasts.
Kylie leaned back against him with a soft moan that made his stiffening cock spring completely to attention. As tightly as he was holding her, there was no way for her to miss it.
She chuckled softly in her throat. “This is the laundry room, in case you hadn’t noticed. Do you maybe want to see the rest of the house or were you planning on bending me over the washing machine?”
He hadn’t been, but now that she’d mentioned it...
Kylie turned in his arms, blue eyes sparkling like the stars over the desert. “You got that helmet?”
Stupidly, he almost answered that he’d left it on the bike before realizing they were doing metaphor again. He grinned, unbuckling his belt and opening his trousers.
Kylie’s eyes were amused as he shifted his hands from his trousers to hers. “I take it that’s a yes?”
“Yes.” He kissed her as he yanked her belt from the loops, and she gasped into his mouth. He hadn’t meant to take the belt clean out, but there it was in his hands. He wrapped it lightly, teasingly, around her wrists as he let go of her mouth, giving her plenty of opportunity to slip her hands out. Instead she wove her fingers together, breath quickening as she held his gaze.
Dev slid the belt through the loop and buckled it, pulling it just a notch tighter than he needed to. He unfastened Kylie’s pants and slipped his fingers inside, breaching the lace, inching downward and finding the warm hood of her clit. Kylie moaned, blue eyes lidded with desire, pressing herself against his fingers.
“You’d better not be a psychopath,” she said breathlessly.
Dev smirked. “A bit of a pervert, perhaps, but definitely not a psychopath.” He drew his hand out, making her moan again, this time with disappointment. “Before we go any further, I just want to get a verbal—”
“Yes. For God’s sake, yes.”
He stopped wasting time and yanked the leather trousers and lacy pants down her hips in one go, then picked her up with his hands on either side of her waist and sat her firmly on top of the washer. The brushed steel had to be freezing but she didn’t complain. The legs of her trousers were too narrow to get over the heels of her boots so he stepped into the circle of her knees instead of bothering with tugging off all the leather.
Dev kissed her once more, enjoying the way she trembled at his touch while hooking her ankles behind his arse and tugging him closer. She had a way of being in control and ceding just the right amount of it at the same time. But he wanted a little more of it just at the moment. He lifted her arms above her head and slid the belt buckle onto a hook on the underside of the shelf overhead meant for hanging clothes. The slight stretch raised up her cotton shirt on her waist. He pushed it higher, letting his thumbs drag over the hard points of her nipples through the lace of the bra as he lifted the shirt to sit above it.
Kylie squirmed on the washer lid, suddenly making kitten noises instead of deep moans. This was where he wanted her, so soaked with desire that she didn’t care how she sounded. He tugged the bra down and lowered his head to her breasts, sucking each nipple in turn while she writhed and made more insistent mewling sounds.
He dug in his pocket for the condom, not finding it for a horrible moment, and enduring a look of disbelief from Kylie that promised coming wrath, just before his fingers closed over it. Dev presented it in triumph and grinned as he opened the foil packet. She rewarded him with a dig of her heels into his thighs like she was urging a horse to full speed, and Dev complied, unrolling the condom onto his cock and driving forward to meet her as she bucked against him.
The washer was already slick with her arousal and the unimpeded motion joined them together like a freight car coupling with a train. Dev held her face between his hands, marveling that her sparkling eyes now seemed more green than blue, and groaned appreciatively as she rocked against him with a circular motion of her pelvis. Kylie turned her head and sucked his thumb into her mouth—the thumb he’d dragged against the slickness on the metal as he’d pulled her in close. She moaned at her own taste and closed her eyes, and Dev braced his free hand against the washer and began pumping his hips, thrusting inside her with all the grace of a wild animal taken over by the instinctive drive to procreate.
His thumb slipped from her mouth and Kylie threw her head back, moaning loudly in tempo with his vigorous thrusts. Determined to make her miss a beat, he picked up speed, driving her to a stuttering staccato, and Kylie let her legs fall open, arching her back and making the most insanely hot keening wail he’d ever heard in his life. The sound dropped into a sort of mournfully sexy moan as her head hung forward, and it was only then he realized he’d already made her come.
The look she gave him as he unbuckled the belt around her wrists was somewhat dazed. Dev draped her arms over his shoulders and lifted her off the washer, supporting her with her buttocks cupped in his hands.
“Where’s your bed?”
Kylie tightened her arms around his neck. “Through the door and up the stairs.”
She clung to him while he let go with one hand to turn the doorknob, and then he rebalanced her weight against him and stepped up into the utility closet off the kitchen. The stairs were to the left. Dev had to draw on the demon’s strength to mount the stairs without losing his grip on Kylie—in more ways than one.
“Second door on the left,” Kylie gasped as he reached the landing overhanging the living room below. A decorative iron railing was the only thing between them and a ten-foot drop.
Dev managed to swing Kylie through the bedroom door and onto the bed without a mishap. He wanted to hear her make more noise. A lot of it. He pulled out, careful not to let the condom slip, and Kylie protested, trying to hook him in place with her boot heels.
“There’ll be plenty of time for that,” he said patiently. “I’m not done with you yet.” He had to duck down and sidle backward to get out of her grip, and he had the feeling he would have failed if the leather trousers weren’t so difficult for her to maneuver in. Dev worked her boots off and tossed them aside, and Kylie watched him as he slid the leather over her ankles one at a time. The look in her eyes made him wish he’d kept her belt a little longer. Of course, he did have his own.
Her eyes fixed on his hands as he began to work his belt out of the loops. “What are you doing?”
“I left yours downstairs.”
She raised an eyebrow but didn’t stop him when he slipped her arms from the leather jacket and trussed her wrists a second time. “You’d better make this worth my while.”
“Count on it.” He winked and rolled her over onto her stomach before she could protest, slipping the belt through the headboard and tying it off.
Kylie turned her head. “That yes I gave you wasn’t an irrevocable free pass to the entire amusement park. Certain rides take extra tickets.”
Dev laughed as he climbed onto the bed and stretched himself along her length. “Don’t worry.” He kissed the back of her neck, breathing in her scent. “I intend to earn every ticket I plan to use.” He unhooked her bra, glad to see it was the kind with adjustable straps that crossed in back. All he had to do was slip the little hooks at the end out of the tabs and he was able to draw the entire garment out from under her. Otherwise, he’d have had to resort to his pocket knife.
Unfettered, Kylie wiggled to reposition herself against the bedspread. “Nice trick.”
“I know a few.” He kissed his way down her back, drawing a contented hum from her when he placed one at the top of her bum. He wasn’t going for contented hums. His tongue slipping along her crack made her shiver and let out a little gasp. Still not what he was going for.
Dev spread her cheeks with his thumbs and made his slow, steady way over every little bump and ridge of flesh while she moaned into the pillow until he reached what he was after and thrust his tongue against the swollen flesh between her legs. Kylie made those kitten noises again as he tasted her, drawing the flat of his tongue from bottom to top, from his perspective, like the first, gluttonous lick of an ice cream cone.
The kitteny sounds got louder as he stroked again, spreading her open. Lifting her hips a little to give himself better access, Dev buried his face in her heat, his mouth locked on the prize.
Kylie’s moans were loud and unabashed as she shook under his attentions, rolling her hips in his hands, shuddering and gasping until she was almost crying. When he was sure he’d made her climax, he straddled her legs and leaned down to her ear. It was wet with tears. She really was crying.
Dev laid a hand on her back. “You okay, darling?” He thought for a moment she was sobbing but realized she’d begun laughing uncontrollably.
“Am I okay?” she gasped between the laughter. “Holy Mother of God. If you want to kill me that way, it’s fine with me, but if you’re planning to fuck me, I think you’d better do it quick before you render me unconscious with that damn tongue.”
Dev wasn’t about to waste any time. He yanked off his boots, stripped off his clothes, and drew Kylie up onto her knees and entered her once more while she pulled back on the belt that held her wrists and rocked into him to meet his thrusts. Feeling light-headed as he pounded toward climax, he dismissed it as the natural effect of his pent-up desire.
He put his mouth close to her ear. “Do you want me to come inside you?”
Kylie moaned and gyrated her hips. “God, yes.”
“Tell me. Tell me to do it.”
She turned her head toward him and he leaned in to snatch her mouth with his so that the words were moaned against his lips. “I want you to come. Come for me.”
Dev jolted inside her with a roar of pleasure, biting her lip a bit harder than he’d meant to and tasting a drop of blood as the ejaculation shot out of him. He felt as if every muscle he had was releasing simultaneously with it, and he clutched her waist to his as he collapsed onto his side against the bed with an almost giddy sense of lightness.
“That was—” He tried to catch his breath, licking the salty taste of blood from his lip. “That was—” He pulled out swiftly with a cry of surprise as the scar tissue at his back felt like it had caught fire.
“Dev?” Kylie tried to turn her head toward him. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
He was on fire, every inch of him crawling with agonizing heat. Dev looked down at his chest. His skin looked like it was boiling. No...it looked like it was—
“Kurrrrr!” The word, hurled from his tongue, was the last coherent thought in his head before he leaped from the bed and stumbled backward on the floor with a sound coming out of his throat that wasn’t his own.
Chapter 7 (#u01760b51-3c5e-5b7c-8c5b-260a9f903794)
In place of the constant tingle that had been animating her skin since Dev’s first touch, an icy column of fear gripped her spine. That growl had not been human.
Scrabbling noises of something large and lumbering thudded along the wood floor. The bed shook with the impact.
“Dev?” Ione realized she’d squeezed her eyes shut and she opened them with effort. She was still facedown against the pillow, tethered to the headboard. She took a deep breath and turned her head. At the periphery of her vision, a dark shape hulked. A dark shape that was making heavy breathing sounds—and seemingly emitting steam. Oh, God.
She held her breath and grabbed the belt with one hand just above the spot where it was buckled while folding her other hand almost in two, the pad of her thumb against the outer edge and fingers tented tightly together, and tugged. Dev hadn’t strapped the belt tightly this time and, with a little effort, she freed the hand. She quickly undid the buckle to free the other. Ione sat up on her knees and took another breath before turning around.
An expletive she’d only uttered once or twice in her life burst out of her as she scrambled back against the headboard. Covered in vivid green scales, like poison personified, the creature hulked inside her doorway on all fours, its massive bulk tight and compact, as if ready to pounce. Tension quivered in its thick, muscular limbs, while fiery gold eyes glared out at her from a narrow, reptilian face beneath a bumpy, ridged forehead that sloped back into hornlike protrusions. The bumps on its head continued in a bisecting ridge of the bony substance that traveled down the creature’s body and all the way to the end of the long tail stretching out the door.
The hottest sex she’d ever had and the guy had to get eaten by a monster. And she was about to be the second course.
Her mind was processing this, assessing the situation, as though hulking monsters in one’s bedroom were an ordinary occurrence.
The creature breathed out a huff of steam and made a deep growling noise in its throat that seemed to set the whole house rumbling. Ione considered going for the gun she kept loaded in the nightstand. Her eyes flicked toward it. Depending on how fast this thing moved—the thing moved, and instinct kicked in. Change the perception of a thing and you might change the thing itself.
Ione flung out her hand toward the creature with a sort of battle cry, pushing against air with a move she’d learned in krav maga. The monster flipped backward, cracking the doorframe as it tore through it, a look of surprise in its fiery eyes as it righted itself and skidded along the landing. Ione was almost as surprised as it seemed to be. She’d imagined the force of air throwing it backward, but she hadn’t really expected it to work. It crouched on the landing, tail switching and taking out a row of the railing behind it. Before she could lose her nerve and allow logic to surface, she made the gesture and shouted again, this time with words.
“In the name of God and the Goddess, get out!”
The creature tumbled backward over the railing, batlike wings at awkward angles as if it had forgotten how to use them, and landed on its back on her living room floor with enough force to shake the building. She prepared for an attack, this time going for the gun, and ran out onto the landing with the weapon in both hands, aimed at the thing’s skull. She’d taken shooting lessons to be sure she’d know how to use it if the time ever came, but she’d never actually had to fire at anything but a shooting-range target.
Ione squeezed the trigger, realizing too late she’d also squeezed her eyes shut. The bullet struck the window behind the thing’s head.
Instead of lunging for her, the creature got to its feet and turned to barrel into the wide pane of plate glass that extended across the far wall. The thick glass shattered and the beast clambered through it only to let out a roar of surprise as it struck an invisible barrier inside the walled garden. Rafe’s wards.
“Oh, crap.” She hadn’t expected to need anything to get out; they were fashioned to keep unwanted magic from getting in. If they’d been her own, she could have unlocked them, but these were Rafe’s arcane Aztec symbols.
Ione stepped onto the landing, the gun still aimed at the creature in her backyard. If the place was warded so well that this thing couldn’t get out...how the hell had it gotten in? The golden eyes blinked at her like huge tiger’s-eye gemstones.
“No...effing...way.”
Steam huffed gently from its nostrils as it contemplated her from where it sprawled in the blanket of shattered glass. Ione was still holding a gun on it, threatening a creature she’d effectively cornered. And she was standing naked on her landing. She lowered the gun. The creature didn’t move. Ione stepped into the bedroom to grab her robe from the door. There were Dev’s pants and boots in a heap at the foot of the bed. She stepped back out, wrapping the robe around her. The creature hadn’t moved except to sit back on its haunches like a dog waiting for its master.
Ione descended the spiral staircase that led to the second floor from the front entryway, gun still clutched in her hand, and slowly approached the broken window. The creature breathed out a soft plume of smoke and lowered itself to the ground, settling its bumpy muzzle against its front feet.
With her finger poised on the trigger, Ione studied the glittering eyes from her closer vantage point. “What the hell, Dev?”
The creature let out a sigh, its ridged back gently rising and falling.
She took a step closer. “If that’s really you...why can’t you change back?” Eustace Scrubb had woken up similarly transformed in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader after falling asleep in a dragon’s lair coveting its hoard. What had Dev coveted? Ione? Well, Kylie, anyway. She glanced up at her reflection in what remained of the window. Crap. Ione. When had she lost the glamour? Not that it mattered now. The Covent assayer sent to end her career had screwed her brains out and turned into a dragon. Because, seriously, this was a dragon she was looking at.
“Did I do this to you? My Lilith blood?” The dragon didn’t seem to have the answer to that.
Someone was going to walk by and see this thing from the side path. “Come in here. It’s all right. I won’t shoot you.” She set the gun aside and opened her palms to show they were empty in case the dragon couldn’t understand human speech.
The creature raised its head, tilting it.
“Come on.” She pointed inside the house.
The dragon rose a bit clumsily and she saw why as it started forward. Blood dripped from its left foreleg. She hadn’t entirely missed it, after all.
Ione backed out of the way as the dragon limped through the gap in the wall and hovered just inside. Whether or not it had Dev’s consciousness in there, it definitely wasn’t trying to hurt her.
Watching her, it settled onto the floor, favoring the leg she’d struck, and curled its tail around its body, again resembling an obedient dog. Except this “dog” was taking up half her living room—and would take up all of it if it stood and stretched its wings.
She took a tentative step toward it. “Can I look at your leg?” When it didn’t move to stop her, she came closer and crouched beside it to try to determine how badly she’d injured it. She’d heard the bullet hit the window, so it must have gone clean through. Ione could only see one wound. Perhaps she’d just clipped it. Even so, the dragon was losing a fair amount of blood.
“Stay here.” Ione went for the first-aid kit in the downstairs bathroom opposite the laundry where Dev had—Christ.
With the little kit in hand, she realized what she had wasn’t exactly made for dragon proportions. Or dragon flesh. She brought a towel with her to clean the wound and ended up tying it in place around the upper foreleg. The gauze and bandages were useless. The dragon put up with it patiently.
“Sorry.” She glanced up at the glowing gold eyes. “It’s a good thing I’m not a better shot.”
The dragon made a soft rumble in its throat that might have been a growl or a murmur of agreement. Ione’s stomach answered with a growl of its own. She hadn’t eaten anything since a cup of cottage cheese and a pear before going to the club. Dev probably hadn’t eaten dinner, either. Which meant the dragon was probably hungry. What did dragons eat? It was sort of like a dinosaur, which was a sort of lizard, right? What did lizards eat? Smaller lizards? Ione was on a vegetarian kick, so the only animal proteins in the house were eggs and cheese. Maybe lizards were herbivores.
She compromised and scrambled some eggs with spinach, mushrooms and peppers and crumbled some sharp cheddar and seitan sausage substitute into it. After dishing it up—the largest portion in a big serving bowl—she grabbed the rest of the bag of spinach and tossed it into a separate bowl with some cucumbers and tomatoes, just to give the dragon some options.
“I wasn’t sure if you were hungry,” she said coming back from the kitchen with the food. “I’m always starving after s—” She swallowed the word, heat rushing to her face. The dragon probably had no idea what she was saying, but it didn’t seem right to discuss having been intimate with someone who was no longer in human form. “I don’t know if you’re a grazer or a hunter. I’m guessing hunter, but this is all new to me...so, here—take your pick.” She set the bowls in front of the dragon, but it merely gave them a disinterested sniff.
“Suit yourself.” Ione sat to eat on the one chair that hadn’t been knocked over in the chaos.
By the time she’d finished eating, the towel she’d tied around the dragon’s wound was soaked through. Ione got another from the laundry room and this time wrapped it around a smaller towel folded into a square and pressed against the wound. She could swear as she finished that the dragon was purring.
She tucked her robe around herself as she stood, realizing she’d probably been flashing it. Not that Dev hadn’t seen it all, but this wasn’t exactly Dev. Ione pinched the bridge of her nose and realized how tired she was. The events of the night had worn her out—some more pleasantly than others. Maybe she’d be able to come up with some way of dealing with the dragon in the morning if she just got some sleep.
Damp wind was still blowing through the gaping hole that had been her living room wall. Ione pulled the heavy curtains across it, which helped a little. Between Rafe’s wards and the alarm system—and the fact that a freaking dragon was camped out in her living room—she’d probably be safe enough. She pocketed the Glock just in case.
“Okay, I’m going up to bed. Will you be all right down here?” Like he was going to answer. “Okay,” she said again. “Good night.”
She figured she’d probably just lie there on the bed no matter how tired she was. How could she possibly sleep with a dragon in her living room? But she was out like a light, only waking early in the morning to a loud thudding and clattering on the stairs.
Ione grabbed the gun and jumped up, launching herself into the hall to find the dragon clumsily attempting to climb the spiral staircase, its tail coiling through the railing.
“Mother of God. What are you doing?”
The dragon’s claws slipped on the open wooden stairs and it tumbled backward before flinging its wings out instinctively to catch itself, apparently finally remembering it could fly. It circled the open-plan area beneath the vaulted ceiling, sweeping pictures off the wall and onto the living room floor—with every other item it had knocked over on its way to the stairs—finally settling on the landing, puffing steam like the “Little Engine That Could” and looking rather smug.
Ione tucked the pistol into her waistband at the back of her cotton pajamas. “You’re pretty pleased with yourself, I see. What do you want, a treat?” The dragon tilted its head. Ione yawned. Judging from the pale glow from the skylight, it was about six in the morning. “I’m going back to bed. If you’re hungry, you’re going to have to wait until a reasonable hour.”
After climbing back under the covers, she heard the dragon lumber into the room, just barely clearing the door frame, and settle onto the floor by the bed. Ione opened one eye as the dragon curled its tail over itself like a cat for warmth. How a dragon could be cold with steam coming out of it, she wasn’t sure, but it certainly made for a comfortable room for a human.
She woke again a few hours later to find the dragon gone, but a curious lapping sound was coming from the bathroom down the hall. “Oh, God.” She’d forgotten to give it water. This was why she didn’t have pets. Among other reasons.
Ione kept her eyes closed and pretended not to hear it, stirring only as the dragon thumped back into the room. She opened her eyes, a bit disappointed that the dragon’s transformation hadn’t simply reversed given a few hours. Was he going to be stuck like this? Blood was dripping down the creature’s foreleg, the makeshift bandage soaked through.
She got up and got another set of towels to replace the sodden ones, trying not to think about the state of her pale wood floors and the cream-colored carpet in the living room as she rebandaged the wound.
But by the time she’d cleaned up and gone to the bathroom, blood was already seeping through the towel. Shouldn’t the bleeding have stopped? Maybe dragons had different circulation systems. What the hell was she going to do? It wasn’t like she could dial 9-1-1 and get a paramedic over here to treat a dragon. She needed a vet.
It occurred to her that Theia had worked as a veterinary assistant while studying for her degree in zoology. God, she couldn’t bring Theia into this.
The dragon’s warm breath seemed to be more rapid than it had been. She had to do something.
Theia answered on the first ring. “Hey, Di. Guess you must have felt me dreaming about you, huh?”
“Uh, no. Not exactly.” Before learning about the Lilith blood, she’d never taken her baby sister’s prophetic dreams seriously. “What have you been dreaming?”
“Mostly just vague dreams about power—your magic growing stronger.”
Ione didn’t know about that, unless her magical abilities had been responsible for what had happened to Dev.
“I also dreamed you got a dog. Which is hilarious, because you hate animals.”
“I do not hate animals. I just don’t like having to clean up after them. I did enough cleaning up after you guys.” She bit her tongue. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“You did, but that’s okay. I know it couldn’t have been easy having to take care of a bunch of snot-nosed kids when you were barely more than a kid yourself. And we love you for it. You know that.”
Ione’s eyes were smarting and she pinched her arm. She couldn’t afford to be sentimental right now.
“Actually, that’s what I’m calling about. Animals. Do you know anything about...reptiles?” God, was it a reptile? Were dragons reptiles?
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Jane Kindred
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: One Night with a Dragon…Ione Carlisle worked hard to be accepted by the Sedona Covent, but now everything is falling apart. Especially when she lets loose for one wild night on the town and ends up with the one man she should be avoiding at all costs – the man who came to Sedona to fire her. He ignites in her a carnal need that she can′t and won′t ignore…Buttoned-up assayer Dev Gideon′s loyalty to the Leadership Council should be reason enough to resist Ione. Never mind that she stirs the ancient demon secretly bound within him. But their blood connection is undeniable. And now Dev must risk his reputation, and his soul, to save Ione from a vigilante intent on destroying her and the entire Covent, even if that means unleashing the monster inside.