Forbidden Magic (3 page)

Witch blood swimming with pure power.

Ram pulled on his discipline and jerked his gaze away just as he saw twin shadows streak across the darkened sky. They banked a turn and came in for a landing. Then the two split up.

Phoenix Torq folded up the brightly colored wings of his phoenix and they disappeared beneath his skin. He strode to the witch that Ram was keeping a careful distance from. The hardass hunter had a way with women, even witches, and would calm her. Not like Ram. Her blood would light the fuse of his dark cravings, but it wouldn’t bother Phoenix as he had mated and broken the curse. If she needed more help than her magic could provide, Phoenix would get it for her.

Axel Locke headed straight for Ram. He folded up his hawk wings and they vanished into the tattoo on his back. The huge leader of the Wing Slayer Hunters was shirtless, clad only in jeans and boots. His green eyes were hard with anger. “Update me.” Ram could feel the witch using her magic to heal her wound as Phoenix talked to her in a low voice. He focused on Axel and said, “Shane was too tense and sweaty at the club tonight.” Yeah, he managed to notice that, in spite of Ginny…shit. For two months they’d done their best to avoid each other. And tonight, he’d lingered for a full minute, staring at her like a starving man.

Disgusted with his weakness, he’d finally turned away and gone into the warehouse.

But Shane’s demeanor nagged at him, so he’d strapped on his balls to go take care of business and talk to the man. He and Ginny were adults, they could be in the same room for a few fucking minutes.

Pulling his thoughts back to his report, he went on, “Shane stormed by me on his way out of the club, and I caught the smell of witch blood on him. Followed him. He attacked the witch.” He gestured to the woman. “He managed to slash her once before I reached him.” Cold anger iced his veins. He didn’t do failure, and that witch suffering was his failure.

Axel toed the dead man’s wrist, flipping his hand over, palm up. “Lifelines are there; he’s not rogue.” He lifted his gaze to Ram. “What the fuck?”

Adrenaline and need coursed through Ram, making it difficult to stand still. Their god, Wing Slayer, took their souls if they killed an innocent witch. When that happened their lifelines vanished. “He hasn’t killed a witch yet, but he has been getting hits of their blood somehow.” He tilted his head to where Phoenix hovered with the woman. “He would have killed this witch. I could see he’d lost all control. He wanted her blood, all of it.” Ram locked his jaw against a wave of cramping need for the same blood. Never. He’d never give in to the blood and sex curse that made all witch hunters crave the power in witch blood.

Hearing a faint sizzle-popping sound, and feeling the live-wire sensation run down his arms, Ram lifted his hands, but he didn’t see any sparks coming from his fingers. Realizing what he was doing, that he’d broken off in the middle of a report to his leader to stare at his hands like some kind of junkie, he dropped his arms.

Axel watched him with his too-sharp gaze, and said, “The witches are worried about you.

Darcy is worried. She believes this rising electricity in you is going to keep getting worse. You need to find Shayla. Make her understand she has to mate with you.” Right. He was going to hunt down and beg a woman to mate with him for life. A woman, a witch, who didn’t want him. That was going to happen like
Never
. His life was beginning to feel like one big kick in the nuts from Irony. He couldn’t have the woman he wanted, and the woman he needed rabbited to avoid him.

Not feeling the need to clue Axel in to his internal freak show, he said, “Let’s just deal with this situation here. I’ve shifted the short-term memories of the clerk and customer in the store.

They think this guy is drunk, the witch is his girlfriend, and I’m her brother. They’re staying out of it.”

Axel took his hand back. “Impressive.”

Ram shrugged. After seeing what careless memory shifting had done to his mother, he’d made a point to master the witch hunter ability. “Had to do something. They wanted to call the police and an ambulance for her.” A burn began moving through his veins. He could almost feel sparks leaping from his skin. His thunderbird tattoo was waking; for anyone else, no big deal.

But the markings on Ram’s body weren’t like the other witch hunters’. Every hunter had a tattoo of a legendary winged creature. But only Ram’s shot electrical impulses through his body when things got tense.

Axel’s gaze locked on him. “You’re done. Fried. Go find a woman. Now. Phoenix and I got this.”

Ram stiffened. He was military trained, and in this Axel was his commander and chief, but every fiber of his being rebelled at the idea of leaving a job unfinished even when ordered to do so. He’d run on a broken foot, fought with bullet holes spurting blood; he had once pulled a knife out of his own gut and killed his attacker with it.

He did not walk away from a mission unfinished.

Doing the job, saving witches and killing rogues, that was all he had. The only things about him that was right, real, and worth anything.

“I don’t need a woman, I need to do my job,” he told Axel, his voice matching his will in cold determination. “I have to track the source, find out where Shane got the witch blood.” He sucked in a breath to cool the burn eating through him. Then he added, “He was one of my recruits.” That made him Ram’s mistake to clean up. Recruits were picked to train in the hopes of becoming a Wing Slayer Hunter accepted by their god.

“Find a woman.” Axel’s jaw flexed and his eyes hardened. “That’s an order. You’re walking the edge, Ram. The curse is riding you hard. Get control.” Once upon a time, sex had done the job and tamed the curse. But that was before he’d unknowingly run into Shayla Banfield and woken the electrically charged thunderbird inside him. But now? He fired out the words, “Not an option.”

He could hurt a woman with the untamed electricity snapping through him and periodically escaping from the tips of his fingers.

He’d never allow that to happen. As a teenager, before he’d known what he was, he nearly killed a young woman. She was a witch, but back then Ram had known nothing of witches. His grandfather had pulled him off the girl. Neither of them had known what kind of monster lived in Ram, but his grandfather knew about duty and discipline and he’d taught Ram. The old man had given him the tools to get control of the monster inside him. Discipline and self control. That was why he’d chosen the military—discipline. He lived by it and he would die by it. But he would never go rogue.

Axel tilted his head down, giving Ram a stare. “Why is sex not an option?”

“Whatever this shit is in me, I can’t control it. Sometimes when I touch someone with my fingers nothing happens. Other times…” Ram reached out and laid his hand on Axel’s shoulder.

A quick series of tiny pops sounded.

Axel frowned. “So? Barely felt it. Like static electricity from your fingertips.” Jerking his hand back, Ram snapped, “Don’t be an ass. You’re a witch hunter; I could hit you with a fully charged stun and you’d barely feel it. We don’t feel pain like humans or witches.” He sucked in a breath to ice the anxiety roiling in his guts. “The shocking thing is new and random. Sometimes it happens, then it stops. But the next time it happens, the shock seems stronger.”

“Sounds like an easy enough fix,” Axel shot back. “Drain the shock shit by touching one of us until it runs out, then have sex.”

“It’s not that simple, I haven’t been able to predict it like that.” He forced himself to stand still and explain, when he really wanted to go out and do his damned job. Find the witch Shane had been harvesting blood from; and then find some rogues to kill. “I won’t lose control, A. Too risky.” Not that he ever had. Even in sex, he had always been
in control
. Some might call him dominant. But now he wasn’t sure if sexual energy would ramp up the electrical impulses enough to hurt the woman he was with.

The control that he’d mastered, that he always counted on to keep the curse locked down tight, had started to melt like a sunbaked glacier. It felt like his willpower was unraveling, like he was beginning to come apart.

He caught another whiff of the wounded witch and the need clawed through him. He fisted his hands at his sides.

Axel stared him down. “Find a way. Go, Ram or I swear I’ll drag your ass to a room, chain you up and send in Roxy to unleash her sex magic on you. Then find you a willing woman.” Ram shuddered at the thought. They’d all been slapped by the ball-squeezing magic of Key DeMicca’s mate. Roxy Banfield was a fertility witch, and she wielded sex magic with as much impact as Ram used his knife. She could bring any man to his knees and make him beg.

And they all loved her. She’d saved Key with their soul mirror bond. Key was a lucky man, and now he and Roxy had a child on the way. Good for them, but Ram’s destiny seemed headed for a big-ass explosion, not a happy ending.

“Don’t threaten me, A,” Ram said. “Not with sex. You don’t have any idea what you might unleash.” Ram turned and strode away. He believed in the chain of command, but not for this.

He’d deal with this his own way.

Chapter Two

Ginny came to on the floor, stuffed into an unused corner of the bathroom in the nightclub.

The gray tile was cold beneath her, and her muscles were cramped. Pushing up, she blinked in the bright light and fought to clear her sluggish brain.

She saw her cell phone shattered on the tiled floor next to her, and her memory surged back.

Sick with that awful vision, she had stumbled into the bathroom.

Swallowing against the nausea, she had refused to fall apart and be sick when those witches needed help. Damning the consequences, she’d pulled out her cell, determined to call one of the witch hunters out in the field and convince him to go find the enslaved witches.

She’d been scrolling through her contacts when she felt her father’s sudden cold touch blast through her aura and then blackness. The fact that her aura came directly from her angel sire gave that asshole the ability to reach her physically anytime he wished. He could hear and see through her aura as well. Knocking her unconscious was better than some of the crap he did.

She’d bet he made her appear invisible too so that anyone who came into the bathroom wouldn’t have noticed her in the corner.

Furious, she climbed to her feet and kicked the shards of the phone across the floor. As the clattering noise settled, she realized it was quiet outside the bathroom. Too quiet.

How long had she been out?

Had Shane gone to the blood slaves while she lay on the floor? Her bile rose again, but she refused to give in. Shane seemed to know she was on to him, but he wouldn’t know that she couldn’t rat him out. Hopefully he wouldn’t risk going there so soon.

Ginny went to the sink and splashed cold water on her face, trying to pull herself together.

When she looked up in the mirror, she saw herself.

The useless Halfling.

Her brother, Eli, had a purpose of fighting rogues to serve his god. Sure, he could only serve until Ginny was called to duty, since he’d be forced to go with her as her Eternal Guardian. But at least he was useful. At least he could fight and make a difference.

But Ginny? She had her base strength, grace, and speed, and in the last two years, she was getting flashes of a new power that she couldn’t yet control. Wouldn’t be able to control until she ascended, leaving her mortality behind. But until then? She was useless, not allowed to do anything with the information her power revealed. Her father had forbidden it. It was some kind of celestial rule. As a Halfling, Ginny didn’t need to understand, just do as she was told.

She dried her face, refusing to look in the mirror again, refusing to see the weak coward she was forced to be. Her father had used his power to knock her out of commission and break her cell phone. Jesus, was she really going to allow him to break her too? Was she going give up trying to help those blood slaves that easily?

She closed her eyes and saw that chained witch again, her skin sliced open by Shane, and knew her answer. No matter what her punishment, she had to try. She stuffed the paper towel in the trash and turned, determined to find someone to help those witches. Rushing out of the bathroom, she walked out into the silent, empty and dark club.

As she’d suspected, Axel of Evil was shut down. She was alone as she made her way to one of the bars, flipping on the lights around the mirrored rack holding various bottles of liquor.

There was a landline beneath the bar that she reached for.

A sudden and menacing streak of brutal light blazed in the club, so powerful it burned through her and stabbed her brain. The angel had one suck-ass calling card. Forgetting the phone, Ginny covered her eyes with her arms. “Enough!” Damn, when her father dropped in, he made an
entrance
. She’d have been the hit of her birthday party—the one and only that she’d ever had

—if her father had shown up.

But he hadn’t, of course. Ginny was a tool to him, not a child. It had taken her many painful years to figure that out. About the same time she’d figure out her mother was
angel-struck
, sort of the celestial version of star-struck. Her and Eli’s mother did anything and everything the angel said, regardless of the emotional or physical pain it caused her children.

Nothing like a visit from a parent to stir up all her childhood angst. Sheesh, get over it already.

The violent glow that felt like hot satin on her skin dimmed from stunning starburst to flickering firelight. “My patience thins, daughter.”

She blinked away tears caused by the searing light and lifted her head. Lance, short for Vigilance, stood a few feet from her. He’d muted his angel fire glow, but his diamond-bright wings gave away his true essence. The feathers were the color of the moon pouring over a still lake—white diamond with veins of blue and gray. Folded like they were now, there was an elegant arch rising up to her father’s height of six foot, ten inches, then they swept down in a graceful curve to brush his calves.