The Silverwing's Sorceress: THe Shadow Slayers, Book 2.5 (14 page)

Jaxon stepped out of the house and reached for the beer, and still playing his role, Brad extended his hand to give him the carrier. When Jaxon grabbed his wrist and twisted, Brad’s entire body followed the motion, but not quickly enough to keep from dislocating his shoulder from the joint. The bottles hit the ground and shattered, spraying cold brew and brown shards of glass across the entire entryway.

Brad squealed as his shoulder hung sideways. “Get the bastard!” he screamed. Jaxon heard the sound of feet—and not just one pair—loping in his direction.

Still controlling Brad’s body, Jaxon spun and locked his arm around the man’s neck, using Brad’s chest as a shield in time to see four men barrel around the corner of the foyer. The first had been prepared to throw a spell, and he released it, his eyes going wide when he realized it would hit his friend before it hit Jaxon.

When the bolt of energy pierced his chest, Brad sputtered and coughed. “Kill the priestess,” he wheezed before going limp in Jaxon’s grip.

The fourth man turned back, as though he was going to look for Abbey, and Jaxon snarled his fury, his fangs jutting from his mouth and his strong, crystalline claws bursting from this tips of his fingers. They were going after his woman. And he was going to gut every last one of them.

When the second and third men hefted back their hands to try again, Jaxon flipped Brad from vertical to horizontal and threw his body to intercept both bolts midair. The bolts crackled against Brad’s skin but had no effect on slowing him down. With only one of the two doors opened, Brad’s head and feet hit the sides of the doorway, dropping him at the threshold in a bloody heap.

“
Incendia!
” the third man exclaimed, sending a red orb in Jaxon’s direction. It burst into flames just as Jaxon dodged and whipped the knife from the back of his pants. He threw it so hard, the knife buried itself halfway down the hilt in the man’s chest. The man coughed and blood bubbled from his lips as he dropped to the floor.

Brad and the flame-throwing man were finished, but that still left two in the doorway.

One raised his hand, and with a sweeping gesture and a word, the open door slammed shut, leaving Jaxon on the front entry with the other men inside. Jaxon could still see and hear them clearly through the cut-glass windows when the man called to his friend, “You got this. I’m going to find the priestess!” and then took off at a run.

Jaxon growled and grabbed a door handle, but it instantly seared his palm. With a yelp, he released it. Through the oval window, he saw the remaining man duck down and quickly chant something while the man’s glowing hands flexed before him. In the ebbing light of the evening, the glow cast a shadow under his eyes that made the witch look insane, and the static energy he was amassing had his hair standing on end.

Jaxon had only a fraction of a second left before the man was ready to launch his spell—and judging from the atmosphere around them, whatever the spell was, it had a startling amount of energy behind it. Balling his hand into a fist, Jaxon punched through the front-door window in an explosion of glass and grabbed the man by the shirt.

As soon as he made contact with the man’s chest, the surge of energy crested over his arm and fried every nerve ending in his body. He instantly drooped as his knees almost went out from under him, but he didn’t let go. Somewhere in his mind, Abbey screamed.
No, not Abbey. She’s safe in the tunnel…

As the man fed the current into Jaxon, burning him from the inside out, Jaxon’s mind flashed to the first week he’d known Abbey and the night Gable had come for her. Brakken’s insane son had electrified Jaxon’s flesh until Jaxon’s heart had stopped beating entirely, and then he’d taken Abbey, carved her and left her to die. That wasn’t going to happen tonight.

On the brink of losing consciousness, Jaxon centered his will and yanked his hand back through the cut-glass window with every bit of strength he still possessed. His forearm scraping along the juncture where wood met broken glass, Jaxon propelled the man’s face into the door. The thud of his skull shattering against the thick oak was one of the most blessed sounds Jaxon had ever heard. Instantly, the voltage sputtered out.

Jaxon dropped to his knees, his body a misfiring expanse of pain. Blood ran freely from the deep cuts on his forearm. He allowed himself one breath, then he surged to his feet and kicked in the closest of the front doors. Leaping over Brad’s body at the threshold and the other men dead in the foyer, Jaxon took off down the hall.

Chapter Ten

Through the thick dirt walls, Abbey heard a muffled cry of pain coming from somewhere in the house. And a moment later, she felt threads of mountain energy stirring, as if her kind were pulling its strings. The startled scream hadn’t sounded like Jaxon, but even if it wasn’t, it meant Jaxon was in trouble and fighting for his life. She remained frozen where she stood, so frightened for him that she wasn’t sure if she was going to wet herself or vomit.

“
Do something…
” she whispered in the quiet of the tunnel, never hating herself more than she did at that very moment.
Do something, Abbey!

All this time she’d been terrified over losing Jaxon. She worried over every detail—his immortality, her growing old, sex and love and friendship, rejection and abandonment. But the truth suddenly wedged itself between her ribs and drove a stake through her heart. She could lose him anyway. Even an immortal could die. Nothing on this earth was certain but the fact that she loved him and he loved her.

And their love was worth fighting for.

Whatever the future held for them, gray hair or tropical islands, for as long as this life allowed it, she wanted to be by his side. And as long as she was high priestess, no witch was going to take him from her.

Feeling dizzy, she drew in a huge breath and cracked open
The Book of Death
to the section Jaxon had marked. Time to get in touch with her inner priestess.

She scanned the page that spoke of exorcising spirits. What if Jaxon was right? What if she could use the same spell for other forms of energy? It was coven magic, relying more on the strength of the witches than any fancy words or ingredients.

She shoved her green sleeves up her arms and ran a trembling finger over the words. The actual spell looked kind of simple. Earth, air, water, energy. She was surrounded by earth and air, so all she would need was water and as much of her own energy as she could muster.

There was no time for doubt. Jaxon needed her. She closed her eyes and—

The sound of the heavy panel sliding open snapped her head to attention. “Jaxon—” she started to say, but the two men entering the tunnel weren’t Jaxon. “Oh, shit.”

She picked up the book and ran. The torches were barely kicking on in time to keep pace with her. She got to a fork in the tunnel and glanced behind her. Big mistake. The men had already caught up, and the one in the lead reached out and grabbed her hair.

She screamed and tried to bolt, but he yanked her head back and smacked her against the wall. She dropped the book and would have fallen to the ground, but she’d only sunk to her knees before his tight grip on her hair stopped her from going farther. “She has
The Book of Death
!” he said.

The other man smiled, his hand crackling with magic as he waved it in front of her face to taunt her. “Finally something went our way. I thought Claudius would skin us when she survived the accident, but he was right again. Leave her alone a few days here and she gains access to a room he’s never been able to breach. Now our coven has the final book to complete the set.”

Abbey glared at him from her position on the dirt floor. “It’s not your coven. I’m the rightful high priestess of the northwestern hemisphere—not Claudius.”

The man yanked her hair again and pulled her to her feet to meet his eyes. “Yeah, we figured that out when Claudius couldn’t enter the room that held this book. But once you’re gone, he’ll be the only one left in line.”

His friend took her chin in his grip and the energy that had been coalescing in his hand rocketed into her. “Aaahh!” she shrieked.

He laughed and spoke too closely to her burning face. “Claudius has big plans for our people, dangerous plans, and look at you. You’re too weak to lead your neighborhood watch—much less the northwestern hemisphere. We’ll be doing the coven a favor by taking you out of the running…permanently.”

So she had her answer about Claudius. No matter how irrational it was to wish she’d been wrong about him, the truth still hurt.

“Abbey!” Jaxon bellowed as he barreled down the tunnel toward them.

“Stop right there!” the man holding her hair shouted.

As she grasped his wrists and struggled to break his hold, he shook her head like a shark thrashing a piece of meat. She lost her grip, flopping in time with the movement of his arm, feeling like she might lose consciousness at any moment. And judging from the pain in her head and neck, there was a real danger he might either break her neck or inadvertently scalp her.

“Let her go,” Jaxon warned.

From what Abbey could see when the world stopped spinning, Jaxon’s shoes and hand were lightly splattered in blood, but the rest of him looked okay. If she could get that ward down, he’d have a chance of escaping.

The other man pulled a hunting knife from a scabbard at his hip and held it to Abbey’s throat. “Not one more step, you Fallen filth.”

Jaxon went as still as a stone and put his hands up. “I’m not moving. You can lower the knife.”

“Save yourself! They’re going to kill me anyway!” she shouted, right before the jerk of her hair caused the knife to sink into the side of her neck. She gasped and felt a slow warmth trickle down her neck and pool in her collarbone.

“Abbey!” Jaxon said again, his face a tortured mask of desperation. “I’ll do anything you want. Please don’t hurt her.”

“Lie down and lace your hands behind your head,” her captor told him.

When Jaxon dropped to his knees and met her gaze, Abbey saw his love for her reflected in his eyes. She hoped after all she’d put him through, he could understand how much she truly loved him, too.

“Keep that blade nice and tight,” the man wrenching her hair said to his friend before releasing his grip and walking to Jaxon.

When he hauled back his booted foot and delivered a punishing blow to Jaxon’s ribs, Abbey cried out and struggled forward. The man with the knife at her throat shoved her hard into the dirt and put his shoe into her spine, stepping down with all his weight to keep her pinned beneath him.

Tears flooded her eyes when after several shots to the ribs, Jaxon coughed blood onto the dry clay soil. “Please, please stop,” she pleaded, unable to move much more than her pained neck and her hands. “You have me. Just let him go.”

She blinked her eyes to clear away the drops obscuring her vision. But then she wished she hadn’t. The man standing above Jaxon clapped his hands together and sparked them to life, then flung burst after burst of raw energy into Jaxon’s writhing body. If she couldn’t help him, Jaxon wasn’t going to be able to defend himself when they came for his head.

Earth. Air. Water. And energy.

Face pressed to the dirt, she let her watery vision go blurry as she focused on her thoughts.
“Mountain, I’m not sure if you have a spirit of your own, or if you’re made up of all my people who came before me.”
And because she didn’t want whatever energy was here to take it the wrong way, she added,
“I don’t mean you any harm. I just need you to go away for a while, so the other witches can’t use you against me, and so the man I love can get his wings back. You helped me with my mother’s recorder. Help me now.
”

The torches along the wall fluttered almost imperceptibly at first, but when the flames started to build, Abbey put a finger to her lips and implored the powers that be. “
Shhh… Quietly.
”

The flames dropped back to a slow, steady burn, and Abbey wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or not. But the time had come for her to try to be more than she’d ever been before—to attempt to fulfill the promise of her parents’ blood.

The man above her laughed and ground his foot into her harder. “That’s right,” he shouted to his buddy. “Give that Fallen scum what he deserves!”

She blocked out Jaxon’s anguished cries and centered her thoughts, then ran her hand through the dirt. “
Solum,
” she whispered, and felt the earth gently heat under her.

Next, she brought her dusty hand to her lips and blew.
“Aura.”

A light breeze picked up in the tunnel, but the men seemed so intent on torturing Jaxon—one hurling insults while the other hurled spells—that Abbey didn’t even think they noticed.

She ran her fingertips under her eye, capturing the tears there, then she extended her hand in offering and whispered, “
Proluvies,
” and she swore she could smell storm clouds thick in the air around them.

She closed her eyes one last time, so she wasn’t sure what happened when she heard a loud smack of flesh and Jaxon groaned like an injured animal. Energy. Energy was next, and she didn’t know if she had enough to finish the spell… But she had to try. If nothing else, she would prove to Jaxon that she would fight for them with everything she had.

She dug within herself, letting the current build until both hands were quaking. The pressure on her spine increased until she thought it might snap. “What the hell are you up to?” the man asked from above her.