Magic of the Wood House (The Elemental Phases Book 6) (28 page)

She
smirked at that.  “
You’re
gonna lecture
me
on how to be a
villain?  That’s adorable, Wood Phase.”  She made some otherworldly movement
with hips and Sullivan realized he fully believed in magic.

He
was holding it in his arms.

“Oh
my
God!
”

“
That’s
more like it.”  Teja said sweetly.  “You might be powerful,” she found the
rhythm she liked, riding his body with a gleaming smile, “but so am I and I’m
waaaay
more ruthless about it.”

“I
am totally, hopelessly, sickeningly in love with you, Teja Pryce.”  He
whispered.  “Jesus, don’t stop.”

“I
won’t.  Believe me.”  She squeezed her eyes shut.  “
God,
Sullivan.  My
energy is going to get free.  There’s no way I can stop it.  I know you don’t
want to let yours go, so you probably want to hold on for a second and…”

Sullivan
released his powers.

“
HOLY
SHIT!” 
Teja shouted as the Wood energy poured over both of them.  Sullivan
had the satisfaction of seeing her face go blank with shock and pleasure before
he was swept under, too.  Teja dropped her barriers and he lost the ability to
think.

Their
powers combined with a sonic boom.  It resonated though the room and sending
the candle flames jumping three feet in the air.  There was so much power that
Sullivan was blinded by the force of it; growing and combining, until something
new was formed.  Something whole and unique and stronger than either of them
had been separately.  It was incredible.

It
was… magic.

And
with the Phazing came a swell of pleasure so deep that Teja screamed out her
release.  “Sullivan!”

“
Teja.
” 
A fireworks display went off in his body and he felt himself explode. 
Sullivan’s
instincts had been right all along.  Teja was
his. 
Christ, how had he
ever doubted that?  The woman was a part of him.  When he was beside her, he
was
exactly
where he belonged.

As
soon as he regained use of his limbs, Sullivan roused himself to untie her.  “Are
you alright…?”  He began, but Teja didn’t let him finish.  The second her hands
were free, she grabbed his face between his palms and gave him a smacking kiss.

“Tell
me you did that on purpose.”  She ordered.  “You let your powers go, which
means you trusted me enough to Phaze, right?”

“I
trust you completely.”  His eyes were level.  “
Completely,
Teja.”

“Well,
why shouldn’t you?  I’m awesome.”  She beamed.  “I told you we could hold off
on the Phazing, though.”

“We
Fire Phases don’t like to wait.”  He reminded her.  “It’s rule twenty-four.”

“Twenty-
three
.” 
She corrected.  “Rule twenty-four is: “Kill ‘em all.”

“Of
course it is.”  Sullivan grinned, thinking of the craziness that he was now a
part of.  “Your family are such poets.”

“
Our
family.  You just took on half their load, Sherriff.”

“Please
--God-- let’s not spoil the moment.”  He smoothed back her hair.  “Teja, seriously,
there’s no reason to hold my powers back from you.  To hold
anything
back
from you.  You’re my Match.  I know that with everything in me.”

“
Finally
.” 
She rolled her eyes.  “Do you have any idea how much work you are to court,
human?  It’s been a real pain in the ass to win you over.”

“Well,
lucky for us both, you’re irresistible.  There was no way I could hold out for
long.”  He arched a brow.  “What about you?  Are you going to hold back,
anymore?”

“Nope. 
Turns out my emotions aren’t frozen, after all.  They just needed someone who
glows bright enough to warm them.”  She nipped his jaw.  “Now would probably be
a good time for you to warm me up, again.  In fact, it’s
your
turn to be
kidnapped.”

“Well,
if that’s what your feelings are telling you, I think we should respect them.”

“For
a law-keeper, you have a deviant streak that’s very attractive.”  She teased. 
“No wonder I had to fight off half the realm to claim you.”

“Hey,
I just believe my wife should act on her feelings.  Especially when those
actions involve you doing possibly criminal things to my naked body.”

“Wife?” 
Teja tilted her head, like something new occurred to her.  “Hey, I know we Phazed,
but would you feel more secure if we have one of those wedding thingies?  I
looked it up earlier and there’s --like-- a whole ceremony humans have when
they mate.”  She nodded like he might not have known that.

Sullivan’s
hand traced the curve of her cheek.  “You’re already my wife, Teja.”  He said
honestly.  “But, I wouldn’t say no to a really big ring that makes it official
in my culture.”  He shrugged.  “I’m always going to be mostly human.”

She
grinned, pleased with that answer.  “I like you being mostly human.”  She
stacked her hands under her chin and rested against his chest.  “And I can get
behind the whole wedding deal.  Then, I’ll officially own you in two different
dimensions.  And the Fire House can pull off one hell of a party.”  She frowned
in deep concentration, already envisioning the spectacle.  “Do you think we
should have poison ivy centerpieces or go with the traditional hemlock?”

“Whatever
you want, darlin’.”  Sullivan murmured, rolling her beneath him.  “But let’s
figure out the seating charts for the mortuary later.”

“Good
thinking.”  Her eyes gleamed eagerly.  “I think you mentioned something about
your naked body.  So, this time, let’s see if we can manage to get
all
your
clothes off.”  She yanked at the edges of his shirt, sending buttons flying. 
“Or, if not
this
time, definitely next.”

Sullivan
laughed, his lips finding hers.  Crystalline snow flurries drifted around them and
candles flared higher, as her incredible powers danced through air.  Life with
Teja was like nothing he ever could’ve imagined, but it was
exactly
what
he’d been searching for his whole life.  Love and a sense of belonging filled
him.  It was all so beautiful.  Teja was
so
beautiful.

She
kissed him back and Sullivan wasn’t even surprised at how incredible it all
felt.

With
Teja everything was magical.

You
can’t stop ripples in a pond.  Once they start, they change the whole surface
of the water.

You
can’t always predict the patterns they’ll make or foresee the objects they’ll
impact.

Time is
a lot like that.

When
you toss a rock right in the center of it, you can’t know exactly what will
happen.

Sometimes
you don’t realize until it’s too late that you’ve tied yourself to the stone.

Daphne,
of the Time House- “After the Fall: A History of the Dark War”

December
26
^th

“I
told you it wouldn’t work.”  Zakkery glanced over at Daphne, of the Time House
as she appeared in the middle of the room.  The Smoke Phase was still handsome
edging into pretty, a fact he tried to mitigate with punk rock clothes and a
haircut that fell over his matinée idol face.  “No way would the Fire House get
the Happiness box from Sullivan and just hand it over to us.  That’s assuming
Sullivan even
has
it.”

“He
has it, Zakk.  He must.”

“Well,
maybe he does, but we
don’t
.”  Zakkery shrugged.  “At least Eian’s dead,
though.  I always hated that Winter Warlocking prick.”

Zakkery
was stretched out on a red leather sofa that he’d appropriated from the set of
his favorite TV show.  Since he was often stuck on guard duty, he’d been
decorating the Smoke House’s plastic and stone dungeon to make it more
livable.  And his idea of “decorating” was really just stealing stuff from
places like human sorority houses and video arcades.  This was possibly the
only prison on the universe with a pinball machine in the corner.

The
stupid thing never stopped jangling and blinking.

“Vandal’s
still out there.”  Daphne shook her head.  “And the future still isn’t fixed.”

“The
present’s not so great, either.”  Zakkery arched a brow.  In honor of
Christmas, he’d stapled-gunned some twinkle lights to the wall in the shape of
a tree.  They blinked above his head.  “You promised me that you could find my
Match, remember?  So where is she?”

“You’ll
get her.  Calm down.  Some things went a little cat shit, but I have it under
control.”

“You
always say that, Daph, but Gion’s birthday is getting closer and we still don’t
have the Happiness Tablet.”

“You
think I don’t know that?  Relax.  I’m already moving onto Plan B.”

Raiden,
of the Radiation House watched them through the Plexiglas door of his cell,
quietly filing away all their bickering.  For several weeks, he’d been locked
in a forgotten basement of the ruined castle, a victim of the two most
exasperating kidnappers in the world.  The solitude of it didn’t bother him. 
Raiden had never been a people-person.

For
a man who’d spent his entire life fighting, it was difficult not to even
try
to escape his eight-by-eight cell, though.  The inactivity was grating, as was
the confined space.  Raiden was so large that, when he stretched out, his feet
and head nearly hit the opposite walls.  It was claustrophobic and he wanted
out.

He
could’ve gotten through Zakkery.  The boy was a sneaky, amoral criminal, but no
one could match Raiden in a fight.  He believed that without any ego or
arrogance.  It was just a fact.  If he had to, Raiden could kill Zakkery in a
dozen different ways.  …But, he couldn’t hurt Daphne’s sidekick without hurting
Daphne.  And Raiden would
never
hurt Daphne.

Not
intentionally.

Since,
he wouldn’t be getting out of the cell without bloodshed and he was unwilling
to shed their blood, all he could do was gather information and try to reason
with his pain-in-the-ass abductress.

On
the plus side, being stuck here meant he could spend almost a minute a day with
his Match.

Daphne
was doing her damnedest to ruin the world, but she was
everything
to
Raiden.  Absolutely everything.  He’d waited for her for so long that just
being near her was amazing.

Even
if she did hate him.

The
woman was astonishingly lovely, with wide topaz eyes and a face straight out of
a girl-next-door fantasy.  Her honey colored hair pulled back in a ponytail,
highlighting the sandy colored marker at her temple.  Today, she was decked out
in a very short polka dot skirt and an oversized shirt decorated with an
iridescent yellow bee.  Raiden had yet to see her in an outfit that didn’t
sparkle, twinkle, or glow in the dark.

He
watched his Match pace, her long legs taking her back and forth across the
cement floor.  Something must have happened, because she seemed more agitated
than normal.

Raiden
felt his own tension level rise in response.  “What’s Plan B?”

Daphne
ignored him.  She was good at that.  Raiden wasn’t a talkative guy.  Most
people paid attention when he said something, because it was so rare and
because his ruined voice tended to draw attention.  Daphne just tuned him out
like the chattering of some droning radio announcer.

“Yeah,
what’s Plan B?”  Zakkery demanded.

Him
she answered.  “It’s my backup plan to get the box.  It’ll work, it’ll just be
messier.”

“Messier
than
this?
”  Zakkery scoffed.  “Jesus, I vote we come up with a Plan C,
then.”

“We
don’t have time.”

“For
a person who can travel through time, you’re always so impatient.”

“
Impatient?
” 
She repeated incredulously.  “Five hundred years of searching and I’ve got
nothing
on the Happiness Tablet.”

“Remind
me again why you can’t jump back and get the damn thing from Parson.  Then we
could just forget about his human cop of a grandson.  Trust me.  It’ll be
easier.”  Zakkery arched a brow.  “Have you met Sullivan Pryce?  He’s five
kinds of annoying.”

“I
can only time jump within my own lifetime and Parson died before I was born. 
It’s the same reason I can’t go back and stop the Fall, or meet Charlemagne, or
go on a dinosaur safari.”  She ran a hand through her hair.  “Anyway, I
know
Sullivan Pryce has the box.  Which means the Fire House has it.  We just need
to convince them to turn it over.”

Zakkery
rolled his eyes.  “Oh,
that
should be simple.”

“Everybody’s
willing to trade for the right price.”

Daphne
was trying to find the Tablets of Fate.  Individually, they could level
planets.  God only knew what would happen if she managed to unite all nine of
them.  Raiden wasn’t sure how many she’d collected so far, but, knowing Daphne,
it was probably too many.

The
edges of her body faded like pixilation on an old TV set.  Daphne could only
stay in the “past” for fifty-one seconds at a time.  Usually, she timed the
whole thing with a studied casualness, but now she looked over at the plastic
Hulk Hogan clock on the wall and swore.  “She’d better hurry up.”

Zakkery
frowned.  “Who?”

“Just
sit there and look pretty.  I can handle this.””

Raiden
didn’t like the sound of that.  He got to his feet and moved closer to the door
of the cell.  “Fee?”

She
flashed him a glare.  The nickname was the only surefire way to get her
focusing on him.  “I
told
you not to call me that.”

Having
her attention didn’t make him feel a lot better, since Raiden could see on her
face that something was very wrong.  “Why are you so afraid?”  He demanded.

Zakkery
sent her a concerned look.  “You’re afraid of something?  You said everything
was under control.”

“It
is!
  Ray has no idea what he’s talking about.”

Raiden
kept his eyes on hers.  “I saw you frightened once before.”  At the time, he’d
thought it was a hallucination or a vision, but now he knew it had really been
her.  “I know what fear looks like on you.”  He braced his hands on the plastic
door of his cell, his heart hammering.  Daphne was the ballsiest person he’d
ever met.  If she was spooked, something bad was headed their way.  “Let me out
of here.”  He ordered.

She
made a scoffing sound.  “Yeah, nice try.”

“You’ve
changed the future by screwing around in the past.  I can see in my visions
that your time has fallen into chaos.  I told you this would happen.  Is
something there threatening you, now?”

He
couldn’t see all the specifics, because she was fucking everything up with her
constant jumping between times, but he saw enough.  All his life, he’d been
able to see the future.  What he saw now was anarchy and worse.  Raiden didn’t
need all the details to know the truth.

He
knew what death looked like.

“And
I
told
you
I’m fixing it.”  Daphne retorted.  The woman would
drown before admitting she needed a life preserver.

“Let
me out of here and
I’ll
fix it.”

“By
killing yourself?”  She stalked over to glare at him through the plastic. 
“Jesus, are we still on
that?
”

“I’m
supposed to be dead.  It was my fate.  Trying to change that is endangering
you, just as I knew it would.  Do you think I would
ever
want to trade
my life for yours?”

Without
Daphne there was nothing for him to live for anyway.

“I
don’t
care
what you want.”  She retorted.  “Just the fact that I
could
save you, proves that it wasn’t your fate to die.  Get over it already.”  She
crossed her arms over her chest.  “Even if you get your wish for martyrdom,
I’ll just go back and save you again.  And again.  And
again
.”

He
wasn’t so sure about that.  It seemed as if Daphne couldn’t change as much as
she pretended.  In fact, she’d gleefully informed him that it was impossible to
put the present back the way she’d found it, so he could only surmise that she
only had one shot at rewriting the timeline.  It was impossible to know the
full extent of Daphne’s powers, though.  She didn’t tell him everything.  He
couldn’t take a chance.

So
far, Daphne had rewritten half a millennium of history in her effort to keep
him alive.  If he pushed her she might do something really drastic.

“Stop
this.”  Raiden warned.  “You
must
stop this before you wind-up getting
hurt.”

Daphne
gave him a level look.  “I have everything under control.”  She insisted, again.

She
was lying.  He could see it.

Raiden
slammed his fist against the Plexiglas in agitation.  He could stay calm and in
control with everyone else, but this beautiful, aggravating woman drove him
right to the edge.  “Whatever the fuck is happening in the future,
I can’t
help you from in here. 
Do you understand that?  If something goes wrong,
I’m stuck in this goddamn cage.”

“You
can’t come to the future, Ray.  Even if you escape, how do you think you’re
going to protect me from him?”

Raiden’s
insides turned to ice.  “Who’s him?  You mean Vandal?”

Daphne
slowly shook her head.  “Just concentrate on living as much as you concentrate
on dying and maybe we’ll
both
get through this.”

Zakkery
frowned at Daphne.  “Hang on, is Raiden right?  Is something wrong with your
time, now?”

Her
lips thinned.  “It’s nothing I can’t handle.  Just…”

The
overhead light flickered and a Phase jumped into the room.  Raiden recognized
her at once.  There was no one in the realm who didn’t know Missy, of the Fire
House.  Children in most Houses were taught to run at the sight of her.

Raiden’s
heartbeat increased, panic setting in as he realized that Daphne was
face-to-face with one of the most prolific assassins ever born.  “Fee, let me
out of here.”  He said sharply.  His Match was brilliant and Zakkery was
devoted to her, but Missy was a trained killer.  She could slaughter them both
without batting an eyelash.  Raiden was the only one who stood a chance against
her.

“Hi,
Raiden!”  Missy gave a cheery wave.  “
There
you are.  Wow, Chason’s been
searching everyplace for you, silly.”  Cinderella blue eyes fixed on Daphne,
swirling with madness and merriment.  “You’re lucky I’m a better tracker than
the Magnet King.”  She paused.  “…Or
un
lucky.”

“I
don’t want to fight you, Missy.”  Daphne held up her hands in a gesture of
peace.  “You don’t know it yet, but we’re actually friends.”

“I’ve
killed all my friends.”  Missy said sweetly.

Daphne
ignored that.  “I just want to trade for the Happiness box and you’re my backup
plan.  That’s why I left you that message on the Cold Palace wall.  You saw it
and understood, right?  I’m betting that’s why you’re here.”

“I
saw it.”  Missy agreed.  Not even Gaia could’ve read what was going on inside
her head.  “What do you have to trade?”

“Do
you have the box?”  Daphne pressed.