Witches' Waves (29 page)

“Not to mention our own magic going crazy,” Meaghan added. She tried to remember the escape, but much of it had become a surreal jumble in her mind. “I'm pretty sure you caused an earthquake.”

Deck snorted. “A
minor
one. Didn't even make the news.”

“Probably because the new Agency scandal was taking all the airtime.” Kyle's voice was mock smug. “We did it. I mean, the Donovans overall did it, but the three of us finished it. So what now? I agree we deserve a celebration. What do you have in mind?”

Deck smiled, and it was a smile that even Meaghan could see because it lit up his aura. “How about we all get married?”

Meaghan squealed, “Yes! Yes!” and threw herself at Deck. Then she blinked. “Can we do that, all three of us? There are big gaps in my education but I don't think it works that way.”

“Not legally,” Deck conceded. “I can't even marry Kyle legally in a lot of states, let alone both of you. But the legal part's just paperwork. The magic is in the ceremony.”

“If you just proposed, I'm all for marrying you both as soon as possible,” Kyle said. “And I may be the first otter ever to say those words. But when you say the wedding ceremony is magic, is that just you feeling romantic?”

“All weddings have a touch of magic to them,” Deck said, “but Donovan ceremonies are rituals that bind our spirits together, more than they already are. And even though you've already said yes, I'll have to propose all over again. The magic starts with a formal proposal that I'll have to look up because it's really, really long.”

“How long?”

“I may have to tie Kyle up to get him to sit still for the whole thing.”

“In that case,” Kyle said, wrapping himself lithely around both of them, “you might need to propose two or three times, to make sure you get it right.”

Meaghan had all kinds of things she wanted to say but she started with the most direct, if not the simplest.

She kissed Deck, long and deep, opening to ocean and earth and lightning, opening to all the nuances of Deck she'd learned already or glimpsed during the ritual.

Then she turned her attention to Kyle, tasting ocean and fur, light and dark, playfulness and seriousness; his personal knife edge between dominance and submission, tenderness and violence. His hands knotted in her hair, a sudden thrill of positive pain, loving control, then let go.

“It's all right,” she soothed. “I won't break.” Then she smiled and added, “And while I'll be happy to explore your tied-up body…I'd also love to have you tie me up sometime.”

“You trust me that much?” Kyle sounded incredulous.

As if she hadn't just seen into his soul. Knew how much he needed this, and also how careful he'd be for fear of doing harm.

There was only one way to answer—with his own words. “With everything I am. Both of you, with everything I am.”

A
Duals and Donovans
Dictionary

Agency, The:
arm of the US Government dedicated to monitoring Differents with the aim of protecting the normy majority.

Animalside:
a dual's animal form, in general.

Different:
any sentient being who isn't a standard-issue human. Includes duals, witches, shamans, sorcerers, kitsune and manitou, among others, as well as extraplanar visitors, such as fae and demons.

Dual:
a shapeshifter. Duals' shape-shifting ability is an inherited genetic trait, and while they look like humans when not in their animal forms, they are a separate species.

Fae:
powerful and unpredictable beings from another plane who occasionally visit—and mess with—this plane.

Kitsune:
immortal fox shapeshifters.

Lady, The:
the feminine face of the Powers.

Lord, The:
the masculine face of the Powers.

Manitou (plural: manitou):
a North American spirit of nature and fertility. Unlike most Differents, manitou can have children with other species.

Normy:
a human with no Different abilities. The vast majority of humans are normies.

Otherside:
Another plane of existence, where the dead go when they leave this plane, and, some say, where physical manifestations of the Powers dwell. Some witches and shamans can travel between this world and the Otherside, as can kitsune and certain other beings.

Powers, The:
the divine Powers as conceived by duals, witches and most other Differents. See also
Lady
,
Lord
and
Trickster
.

Shaman:
human (usually) Different whose magic, aided by one or more spirit guides, works with natural forces and illusion to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”.

Silentspeech (verb: to silentspeak):
telepathic communication used by duals in both animalside and wordside form. Incorporates visual and other sensory images, as well as words; the balance depends on which form the dual is in.

Sorcerer:
human Different whose magic is based on imposing his/her will on other beings, often using words to ensnare. While there is a genetic marker for sorcery, the powers cannot be used without training, although untrained sorcerers are often persuasive talkers.

Trickster:
androgynous, shape-shifting and productively chaotic, this aspect of the Powers personifies growth, change and transformation (often through painful lessons). Duals and shamans are considered children of Trickster.

Witch:
human Differents whose innate magical abilities are focused with often complex spells. Witch magic is genetic and will manifest even without training. Witches work in harmony with natural energies.

Witch-sight:
Witches' ability to see magic and life energy in all beings.

Wordside:
a dual's humanlike form, so called because the animalside thinks more in images. Don't ever call the wordside the “human” side where a dual can hear you!

About the Author

Teresa Noelle Roberts started writing stories in kindergarten, and she hasn't stopped yet. A prolific author of short erotica, she's also a published poet and fantasy writer, but BDSM-spiced contemporaries and hot paranormals are her favorites. Lately she's found science-fiction romance offers new outlets for her creativity, so at any given moment she may be working on the Donovan family's next wild adventure, creating sexy dominants and the smart women who submit to them—but to no one else—or figuring out the logistics of low-gravity lovemaking.

Her favorite nonwriting job was working at an aquarium, because she could spend hours watching the resident otters at play. Thanks to this job, she can also testify that penguins are incredibly amorous and very vocal about it. Despite their high libidos, she has no plans to include penguin duals in any future Duals and Donovans stories.

Teresa is a bit of a crunchy-granola girl who enjoys belly dance, yoga, medieval re-creation, playing in the ocean, cooking and growing more vegetables than she and her husband can possibly eat. Originally from the Finger Lakes region of New York, where it rains even more than it does in the Donovan family's native Oregon, she shares her home in Southern Massachusetts with her husband, a Leo who works in law enforcement, and two overstuffed cats. She and her husband often plan vacations around food, history and/or proximity to water.

Find out more about Teresa at
www.teresanoelleroberts.com
. If you'd rather be conversational, find her on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/TeresNoeRoberts
or become a Facebook fan at
www.facebook.com/AuthorTeresaNoelleRoberts
.

Look for these titles by Teresa Noelle Roberts

Now Available:

Knowing the Ropes

Out of Control

Duals and Donovans: The Different

Lions' Pride

Foxes' Den

Fox's Folly

Cougar's Courage

Witches' Waves

Coming Soon:

The Chronicles of the Malcolm

Thrill-Kinky

Logic says wait. Their bodies scream go. And their spirit guides are playing dirty.

Cougar's Courage

© 2013 Teresa Noelle Roberts

Duals and Donovans: The Different, Book 3

Toronto cop Cara Many-Winters Mackenzie is still reeling from her fiancé's murder when her orderly life takes a turn toward the weird, complete with voices in her head and phantom bleeding wounds.

This violent awakening is the rise of her Different gift—a chaotic, Bugs-Bunny-on-crack magic that she must learn to control before it destroys her. There's only one place to get help: her mother's ancestral village, and a mentor who seems to have stepped straight out of the smoke of her erotic dreams.

Cougar Dual Jack Long-Claw reluctantly agrees to take Cara under his wing, though he'd much rather take the beautiful city girl into his bed. As he guides her through a crash course in shamanic magic, sparks fly—some sexy, some snarky. But when an ancient enemy attacks the village, they must work together to hone a magical weapon against certain destruction.

Common sense tells them it's a terrible time to fall in love. Their spirit guides have other ideas. And shamans who don't listen to their spirit guides are dead shamans…

Warning: Hot shape-shifting feline hero. Strong but shell-shocked heroine. Snarky, meddling spirit guides. And lots and lots of sex: angry sex, crazy sex, magical sex, and just plain sexy sex.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Cougar's Courage:

“Officer Mackenzie?” The voice sounded like her captain's, but Bell wasn't known for his stealthy tread. Had Cara been that lost in thought?

Cara jumped a little and looked up from the incident report she was struggling with, the words dancing behind a rising headache and the pervading sense of anger and uselessness she'd been fighting since Phil's death five months ago. She expected to see her captain's bulky, blue-clad form looming over her with that awkward
no, I'm not checking up on you
expression that was way more annoying than open concern would be—and open concern had gotten annoying sometime before her fiancé's grave was filled in.

Instead, she saw a totally unexpected person, a tiny, wiry old woman with long white braids, no taller than most ten-year-olds, who bristled with energy.

Cara's rational brain took in a few things. Normally, civilians didn't get into the squad room without an escort, but the elderly lady was alone. Maybe someone had dropped her off, said something about why she was there, and then left? If that were the case, that was bad even for the mess Cara had been for the past five months.

The visitor wore a pale buckskin dress ornamented with beads and porcupine quills, not a fashion statement but traditional Native clothing, and no coat despite the frigid February weather. Her silvery braids were fastened with rawhide strips. Not something you saw every day in Toronto. Maybe the old lady figured serious business like a visit to the police station merited her version of a weddings-and-funerals suit or dress uniform.

“May I help you, ma'am?” The unusual visitor had roused her curiosity, which could only be good.

“No, but I can help you, Cara.”

How did she know Cara's first name? Her name plate just said Mackenzie.

The elderly woman extended a small, bony hand, and Cara instinctively took it. She expected it to be icy. Instead, it was hot. As soon as they touched, Cara felt like she was focusing properly on the other woman for the first time. She blinked and recognized her visitor at last. “Grand-mère? Is that you?”

It couldn't be. Cara had been ten the last time she'd seen the elder of her mother's village, and the old lady must have been over eighty then. But the woman nodded and smiled. It was an odd smile, like a tree smiling, serene in a way that you didn't normally see on a human face. “Of course it is, silly. Who else would I be? It's time to come home, Cara. Come to Couguar-Caché before it's too late.”

Couguar-Caché—“hidden cougar” in French—her mother's ancestral village. A place so remote Cara had never been able to find it on a map, even though she knew she'd been there as a little girl. Yeah, just where she wanted to visit in the depths of winter.

As the old woman spoke, the room closed in, leaving only Cara and Grand-mère. The rest of the squad room was still out there—Cara could hear voices, a ringing cell phone—but they were hidden somehow, masked by a fog. Grand-mère had been seated, but suddenly, with no transition Cara noticed, she was standing in an archway made of snow-weighted evergreen boughs. Behind her, where Cara should have seen Dalhousie's chaotic desk and the captain's neat one, was forest and snow, woodland twilight and the corner of a log cabin. A cold, bracing wind blew through the archway, smelling of snow and pine and wood smoke. Somewhere in the background, she could make out a tall man with long dark hair. He turned and looked through the weird portal straight at her with intense amber eyes. He was movie-star gorgeous.

That proved it. She'd dozed off at her desk—it wouldn't be the first time since Phil had been killed, seeing that the busy squad room felt safer and less lonely than her empty bed—and was having a particularly vivid dream. It had to be a dream, right? Because no one else in the squad room was even glancing at her unusual visitor, when normally, on a quiet, snowy afternoon, Goulding, who was a wolf dual, would have been literally sniffing the air and the others would be leaning in, hoping for something interesting. It was the first time Grand-mère had joined the cast of beloved dead people who romped through Cara's mind whenever she closed her eyes, but unlike the others, Grand-mère was cheerful. And she'd brought a very decorative man with her.

But Cara shouldn't be dreaming about handsome imaginary men. In some ways, that was more disturbing than dreaming about bloody dead ones. The involuntary surge of interest reminded her of the real man she'd lost.

Cara jumped to her feet, hoping the movement would bring her back to reality. As soon as she moved, pain drove an iron spike into Cara's head, blurring her vision so Grand-mère appeared transparent and blended oddly with the tree behind her. The wrist Cara had sprained playing hockey in college swelled and stiffened. One leg buckled, screaming with pain—the one she'd broken as a kid.

And blood began to pour from the place she'd been shot two years ago in a domestic gone horribly wrong. More people she hadn't been able to save. Like her mother and father. Like Phil.

She leaned against her desk, frantically trying to stay upright, but the pain was too much. As she collapsed to the floor, faces swam around her—Phil, both as he'd been in life and with a great hole in his chest and a look of shock on his death-pale face; her mother, talking to the trees in the backyard as if they were answering; her red-faced, angry drunk of a father in his own Toronto police uniform, and in his coffin. The wife and children a perp had murdered before shooting her, then turning the gun to his own crazy head.

Suddenly, she was in that crazy head, the dead man's life crashing on her like a wave. He'd tried to be a good, gentle man, but he'd fought a lifelong battle with the monsters in his head, and in the end he'd lost. She knew things about him she'd never read in any of the reports, horrible secondhand memories that made her wonder how he'd lived that long before putting a bullet to his head to stop the pain and made her comprehend, a little, why to him, killing his wife and babies seemed like saving them from an ugly world.

On the floor by her desk, bleeding, in shattering pain, Cara began to cry as she hadn't been able to cry for Phil.

Grand-mère touched her cheek. “It's time, Cara-child. You're ready. He's ready. Go to Couguar-Caché. Or share your mother's fate.” The old woman knelt and kissed her forehead, then stepped back through the doorway of evergreen branches and vanished.

The squad room popped back into focus, the electric lights bright and jarring. Someone was leaning over her—Goulding, she thought, but her eyes couldn't focus through the tears. She brushed him away and pushed to her feet.

For about half a second. Then her leg buckled again and the world turned black. The last thing she was aware of was Goulding's strong arms catching her as she fell, and someone shouting to call for an ambulance.