Something Witchy (Mystics & Mayhem) (40 page)

“I’ll be back, you bitch!” he screamed just before the void took him completely.  “Just wait!  I’ll be back!”

Then he was gone.  I stared at the place where he’d been as my cross fell to the floor with a
ping
.  With unhurried steps, I walked over and picked it up, enjoying the sudden quiet after the howling of the void winds.

“No.  You won’t,” I whispered with a smile. 

“So…beautiful…” 

I turned to find my audience staring at me in awe, but the only face I focused on was Nathan’s.  He was lying with his head in Grams’ lap and his lips were turned up in a bittersweet smile that was so full of love it took my breath away.  Then, I really saw him.  Like,
really
saw him.  His eyes looked like they had sunk into his handsome face.  His cheeks were gaunt and the roadmap of veins I had noticed before were more defined. 

“Grams!  Do something!” I cried, taking a step toward him.

“She can’t, beautiful,” Tyler said quietly as Grams started to cry.  “Her kind of healing only works on the living.  Nathan is an Immortal.  There’s nothing she can do.”

I stood there, mouth working but no sound coming out.  I hadn’t saved him.  Demon or no demon, he was going to die.  My heart shattered into a million tiny pieces at the thought. 

“Get out,” I told them, quietly.  Tyler and Grams looked at me, then each other, but they didn’t move. 

“Ember, he…” Tyler began, but the glare I leveled at him had him shutting up in a hurry.  Seeing as the lightning-like light still hadn’t faded from my skin, I really didn’t blame him.

“You can’t heal him, Ember,” Grams said, her voice so soft and sad it brought tears to my eyes.  “What are you going to do, sweetheart?”

I didn’t answer her for a long moment.  Instead, I caught and held Nathan’s gaze, reveling in the pride and love I saw there.  As I looked into those beautiful eyes, eyes that were growing weaker by the second, I felt a distinct throb along my mark.  It was like a point in the right direction when you’re lost, and I suddenly knew what I had to do. 

“I’m going to improvise,” I told her, my voice just as soft as hers had been.  “I just need a few minutes with him, Grams.  Please.”

Grams and Tyler exchanged another worried glance, but they finally did as I asked.  I waited until the door closed behind them before I turned back to the dying vampire I couldn’t live without.  He was still smiling at me, but he looked weaker than he had only seconds before, more fragile.  Taking a deep breath, I killed the electricity flowing over my skin and walked slowly toward him.

“What…are you…doing, baby?” Nathan asked when I knelt down beside him and pulled my hair to one side, revealing my mark, the mark he had given me that bound us together for the rest of my life.  I saw a shadow of panic darken his sunken features, though, when I reached for the knife Jack had dropped. 

“I’m saving my guy,” I whispered. 

“No!” he croaked.

But it was too late.  I hissed at the instant flare of pain, but I didn’t stop until I felt the warm slickness of blood trickling from the wound I had made across my mark start to snake its way over my shoulder.  Nathan tried to push me away when I hooked a hand around his neck, but, for once, I was stronger than him.  When I pulled him toward me, he turned his face away, his breathing shallow and fast, too fast.

“Please, Nathan,” I whispered, a tear sliding down my cheek.  “Please, let me help you.  Stay with me.  I need you.”

  I don’t know if it was the fact that I had admitted I needed him or just the smell of fresh, warm, unpolluted blood that did it, but he sucked in a deep breath and turned to look at me.  His eyes were glowing white, but I wasn’t afraid.  I smiled at him, encouraging him to take what I was offering. 

Tearing those glowing orbs from my face, he zeroed in on the blood sliding down my neck and he licked his dry, cracked, lips.  I saw it in his eyes when the instinct to feed took over and felt my first flash of fear.  As if he sensed it, he tangled his hand in my hair and held me still.  Pulling me down to him, he closed his lips over the cut I had made in my skin, sucking at it frantically.  But it wasn’t enough.

I gasped in true pain when his fangs sank into my neck, only realizing at that moment how gentle he had been the first time he bit me.  But his dying body wouldn’t let him be gentle this time.  It was demanding nourishment, and I had offered myself up as a full course meal.  He held me to him desperately, his tendons quivering beneath my fingers like he was waiting for me to start fighting him.  I didn’t.  Instead, I closed my eyes and focused all the power in my blood into the ultimate healing potion.

By the time he managed to rip himself away from me, I was more than a little fuzzy and disoriented.  I felt his tongue flick over the wound I had made with Jack’s knife and the punctures he had made with his fangs and shivered, the mutant butterflies only he could give me waking up and going wild.  For a long time, he just sat there holding me, his face buried against my neck, his breathing ragged.

“Why did you do that?” he finally whispered, breathing the words against my skin.  “I could have killed you, Em.”

Because if I hadn’t done it, he would have died.  Because I couldn’t bear the thought of living without him.  Because I loved him.  Valid reasons, all.  But, the one I gave him was, “Because I can’t introduce a corpse to Kim as my boyfriend.”

He lifted his head to look at me and I saw a haunted shadow pass over his eyes for a second before he smiled.  In that moment, I was
really
glad that I couldn’t read
his
mind.  I didn’t think I wanted to know what terrible thought was behind that look.

“And how are you going to explain my remarkable recovery?” he asked, chuckling and holding me closer.

And it really
was
remarkable.  His eyes were bright and his beautiful face was no longer traced in inky-black veins.  He looked healthy and alive and stunningly gorgeous.  When I reached up to touch his face, amazed by how well my plan had worked, he caught my hand and turned his head to kiss my palm, causing a tingle to race up my arm and radiate through me from head to toe.

“Magic,” I teased in a whisper, winking.  “I’m a witch, remember?  It could happen.”

He was still laughing when he caught my lips in a kiss hot enough to set my toenails on fire.  When he finally pulled away so I could catch my breath, I was so dazed that all I could do was stare up at him.  Grinning, he adjusted my weight in his arms and rose to his feet in one fluid motion.

“What do you say we get out of here and leave the explaining for later?” he asked, already headed for the French doors.  “I’d hate for your sacrifice to be for nothing, and if Shea finds out how you ‘healed’ me, it will be.  Because she’ll kill me herself for marking you.”

“God, yes!” I agreed.  Seriously, if I never saw the inside of Mrs. Amelia’s attic again, it would be too soon.  “But…how are we going to get out of here undetected?”

He stopped just short of the French doors and the raging storm beyond and looked down at me, his eyes twinkling.  “Do you trust me, Ember?”

“Yeah…” I said, drawing the word out as I looked between him and the storm outside.

“Good,” he said, smiling wickedly.  “Oh, and one more thing.”

“What?” I asked, really not liking that look on his face.

“I hope you don’t mind getting wet.”

Heart and Soul

I didn’t really pay attention to where we were going until I looked out the window of Nathan’s rental car and the first thing I saw was my parents’ house.  I felt a stab of pain in my heart and looked away quickly, feeling tears start to burn my eyes again.  Nathan squeezed my fingers, but didn’t try to say anything to make me feel better.  He knew a lost cause when he saw one, I suppose.

We turned the corner at the end of the street and had only gone a couple of houses down when he turned into a driveway and hit a button on his visor for the garage door.  I gave him a quizzical look, but he carefully avoided making eye contact with me. 

“Where are we?” I asked, even though I thought I might already know.

“My house,” he said, looking like he wanted to wince when he saw the expression on my face. 

Yeah, that’s what I had been afraid he was going to say.

So he had been right around the corner the
whole time
?  He had been so close and I had never even known he was there.  I guess the close proximity had made it easier to spy on me, though.  I mean, we wouldn’t want being a creepy stalker dude to be difficult, now would we?

I barely caught a glimpse of the exterior of the house before we were safely ensconced in the dark garage, but the impression I got was of a medium-sized, family style home.  Somehow, I couldn’t see it being something Nathan would have chosen for himself.  It just didn’t have the right…flair…for Nathan.

“It was this or Amelia’s,” he said, laughing, as he hit the button to close the garage door behind us and killed the engine.  “I’ve made do, but it’s not at all to my liking.  Not nearly enough windows.  But, it was close to you and since that’s where I wanted to be...”

 “What are we doing here, though, Nathan?”

He turned in his seat to face me and took both of my hands in his before looking deep into my eyes.  We sat like that for several seconds and I couldn’t deny the thrill that kept shooting down my spine or the tingling, electrical, sensation I felt everywhere his skin touched mine—and in a few places it didn’t.

“You’re going to stay here,” he said, finally, taking a deep breath.  “With me.”

 “I can’t move in with
you
,” I shrieked, my voice almost high enough to shatter glass.

“Why not?  Because I’m a vampire?”  He grinned, waggling his eyebrows.

“No, I don’t care about
that
.  I can’t move in with you because you’re….well,
you.
”  I snatched my hand free and waved it at him to indicate the answer to that should have been obvious.  “I just…I can’t.”

The look he gave me then was so warm and mesmerizing it should have been illegal.  It was coercion, plain and simple.  He used my hand to pull me toward him and I saw his intentions in the heat in his beautiful eyes.  He was going to kiss me senseless and I would do whatever he asked me to.  Instead, he surprised me by doing nothing more than cupping my face in his hands and giving me a heartbreakingly pleading look.

“Stay with me, Em,” he breathed, repeating the same words I had whispered to him as I tried to save him, his lips so close to mine that I could almost feel them.  “Let me protect you.  Let me show you how remarkable you are.  Let me love you, Em, the way you deserve to be loved.”

I just stared at him, all my resistance melting like a snowball in July.  I wanted the kind of love he was promising, wanted someone to stand by me when things got out of control.  I wanted
him
. 

My surrender became absolute as I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him.  When my tongue traced his bottom lip, he moaned deep in his chest and his hands wrapped around my waist and lifted me into his lap.  It wasn’t until he grasped my hips and pulled me closer and I felt the consequences of what we were doing through the layers of clothing separating us that I realized things were going a bit further than I had intended.

Nathan drew away first—which was a blessing because I really didn’t think I was able to—and let his head fall back against the headrest, exposing a long column of neck that was just begging to be kissed and nibbled on, an urge I was hard-pressed to resist.  His eyes were heavy-lidded and wicked sexy when he reached up to tuck a curl back behind my ear.

“That was worth getting slapped the first time,” he breathed, his cool fingers teasing the skin of my back just below the edge of my hoodie.  “As a matter of fact, it would have been worth getting slapped this time.”

I laughed—I couldn’t help it.  He smiled in response, drawing my attention back to his lips, and I didn’t even bother to fight the temptation to kiss him, forgetting momentarily why we had stopped the first time.

I could have happily spent the rest of my life kissing Nathan.  Just the sensations shooting through my body would have made it a worthwhile way to spend my time.  When he released my lips to let me breathe, his burned a trail along my jaw to my neck.

“Nathan, stop,” I gasped, arching against him involuntarily when he gently nipped the soft skin over my racing pulse. 

“Why?” he breathed against my skin.

“Because,” I said, trying to think rationally while he was wreaking havoc on my body, “Because we’re in a
garage
.”

He groaned and I could literally feel his frustration as his body tensed.  When he leaned back to look at me, though, he was smiling again and I caught my breath at the totally sexy gleam in his eyes.

“Well, if you’re sure…” he said, just leaving that invitation hanging there. 

Was I sure I didn’t want to be deflowered in a garage?  Yeah, I was pretty sure about that.  I had something much more romantic in mind.  Something that included a lot of roses, candlelight, and a really big
bed
.  You know, the typical fantasy.  Only, I was determined to see it become a reality.