Bound by Light
Bound by Light
Anna Windsor
CONTENTS
For Nancy Yost,
who keeps me laughing
He took her mouth with his, and Merilee knew she belonged to him now, whatever he wanted, however he wanted to take her. As she went completely limp in his arms, Jake broke away from the mind-altering kiss and stared at her with those stormy gray-blue eyes she absolutely couldn’t look away from. They flickered to gold, then back to gray-blue, making her heart stutter. His lips pulled back and his skin shimmered from tanned to pearl as his fangs flashed in and out of existence.
"Do you really want me?" he asked, his voice so low, so ominous that delicious chills charged all over her skin. "If you say yes, I won’t stop."
Jake’s eyes flashed golden. Merilee’s breath caught painfully in her chest, but she absolutely could not deny the raging want, the need, that filled her.
"Yes," she whispered.
(prologue)
May, fourteen months after the Battle of Motherhouse Ireland
Jake Lowell stared at the woman on the crystal balcony across from his own.
A cool mountain breeze stirred her short blond hair as she moved through the training patterns of an ancient form of
tai chi chuan,
and she opened her long arms to welcome the wind. Stretched into it. Took the energy inside her and let it go, moving with the air, rhythmic, easy, and absolutely fluid.
Jake’s blade-sharp senses registered every detail of her appearance, from her lean, curvaceous shape to the light tint of her olive skin to her soft, ethereal scent of white tea and honey. When she opened her eyes, he saw the same deep, startling blue of the nearby Mediterranean Sea. She looked at home here on the hidden slope of Áno Ólimbos, upper Mount Olympus, near Litochoro, Greece—the City of Gods—in this crystalline palace where villagers once assumed Zeus and Apollo resided.
The woman could be a goddess. Aphrodite, with beauty beyond comparison, or wise Athena, or Hera, the queen of Olympus. Artemis, goddess of the hunt, might be appropriate, too, since she was unwaveringly accurate with her bow and arrows. Most of these women, though, would claim lineage to Hecate, the formidable three-faced goddess who predated Zeus.
A woman so fierce even the king of the gods feared her and treated her with respect.
The woman on the balcony was that fierce, and Jake knew her name.
Merilee Alexander.
Angelic—and as deadly as a Greek horn-nosed viper.
Merilee might look supple and giving, the epitome of everything gentle and female, but Jake knew her secret. Merilee was a Sibyl, one of the Dark Crescent Sisterhood. She was a warrior bearing the mark of the Dark Goddess—a tattoo of a mortar, pestle, and broom in triangular points around a dark crescent moon—and groomed for combat since she first learned to walk. She could kill with her arrows or her elemental control over wind and the movements of air. If she had to, she could snap a man’s neck with her well-trained hands.
He responded to her beauty
and
the danger of being near her, as he had the first time he saw her two years ago, when she was standing next to his twin brothers, Nick and Creed, both cops with New York City’s almost-secret Occult Crimes Unit. How could he forget her? After all, Jake had been sent on a mission to murder one of her best friends.
His blood pumped hot, and he tightened his fists. Jake set his jaw and worked to tolerate the painful pulse in his hard cock.
Merilee had distracted him that day, the force of his attraction giving him strength he needed to fight the curse laid upon him by his very creation. She had been a fantasy, a beautiful dream.
But now . . .
The sight of her, the raging heat he felt at her presence, only reminded Jake of what he was, and what he might never be. If the Greek Mothers couldn’t help him, he didn’t know what he was going to do.
When he looked down at his own body, he saw nothing at all.
He was invisible.
No one could see his blond hair or his bare feet pressed firmly against the white crystal of his balcony. No one could target the hated talisman around his neck or snatch it from him. He raised one hand and squeezed the chain and ring that could be used to control his every thought and action.
"You surprise me, Jake," said a musical voice from the room behind him. "I sense you out on that balcony—but in all the months you’ve been with us, I never took you for a voyeur."
Jake let go of his talisman, tore his eyes from the tempting sight across from him, and strode back into his large, bright room of crystal, ivory, and white granite. Wind became music in this place, playing softly around each corner and angle, through each piece of intricate latticework. Jake thought Motherhouse Greece had probably been designed to make the air sing. As he passed through the curtains surrounding his doorway, he let his emotions flow with the music, then marshaled his energy and focused on becoming visible and . . . and human.
Mother Anemone waited, her blue robes pulled around her tall frame. Her ash blond hair had been swept back and fastened atop her head, no doubt a defense against the ceaseless wind. Jake was uncomfortably aware of the older woman’s misty green eyes fixed on him as he transitioned from nothingness into a creature with white hair, golden eyes, translucent pearly skin, fangs, claws, and a double set of huge leathery wings.
A monster.
I’m no better than a gargoyle, and she knows it.
Yet Mother Anemone did not move her hands closer to the two gold-handled
falcata
swords belted about her waist. She just stood there and watched him. Studied him like an unusual circus attraction.
Rage bubbled through Jake’s very essence, but he didn’t lose sight of the fact that Mother Anemone was trying to help him. She, the other Greek Mothers, and many adepts had been searching week after week to find solutions to his dilemma, even though the other two Motherhouses in Russia and Ireland had already concluded that it was impossible. The earth Sibyls and the fire Sibyls had sent Jake on his way quickly, unable to grant his request. The air Sibyls, though, were archivists, record keepers. They had stores of books and scrolls the other two Motherhouses did not possess. Some forgotten bit of text might exist, some lost practice or ceremony. The air Sibyls, at least, had given Jake hope.
He forced himself to concentrate on pulling in his wings, and they vanished with hardly a stir of air. Jake sank into the heavy feel of gravity. Twinges pinched along his spine as his muscles bulked out and squeezed into more compact shapes. His body adjusted and accommodated, shifting to a height more like a normal human male, a little over six feet tall. His skin darkened to a golden tan, his hair shortened and became blond, and his eyes shifted from golden to blue.
A brief, hot sensation gripped him, like standing in a shooting flame—but everything happened faster now, without as much pain, since he spent so much time in this shape. Even the jeans and white sleeveless T-shirt came easily, reconstituting, as real and tangible as before Jake had given up his corporeal form to take a better look at Merilee’s workout. Some aspects of his identity and appearance, like his lack of wings, his clothing, and his surname, came from conscious choice. His height, his shape, his hair and eye and skin color—this was more mysterious to him, since he never chose these traits, but more or less flowed into being with them the first time he moved from invisible to visible.
To the waiting Mother he said, "You seem shocked I’d watch a beautiful woman. All men are voyeurs at heart. Didn’t you know?" When he gave her a purposely wicked wink, her dazzling smile flared.
A surge of hope claimed Jake, chasing out some of the despair at his center, even raising the hairs on his arms and across the back of his neck. "Did you find something?" he asked, but faltered as Mother Anemone’s smile quickly faded.
Her eyes darkened with a sadness that seemed to weight her supple frame and reveal her great age.
Everything inside Jake sank at the sight.
"We’ve spent many hours delving through archives. Only a few of us speak the languages necessary to read some of the books. Tomes so old the pages threaten to turn to dust when we move them. We read them all. Every possible source—and we can find no ritual to reverse the process that changed you into an Astaroth demon."
Jake’s gut knotted. His breath jammed in his chest. Fresh rage rushed the length of his body, his trunk, tightening every muscle until he thought he would snap in half. "There must be a way. Some book you haven’t discovered."
Mother Anemone shook her head.
Jake’s essence shimmered. His human form tattered at the edges. He fought an urge to turn his head from Mother Anemone, to see if Merilee still occupied the balcony across from his. The sight of Merilee might calm him, but it might shred his insides, too.
Mother Anemone moved to stand directly in front of him. She placed a long-fingered hand on his forearm and squeezed, as if to battle the storm of misery breaking across his soul.
"I’m sorry, Jake. You cannot be human again."
He didn’t respond. He had no more ability to speak.
It was all Jake could do to remain a solid, tangible presence in the room. His last hope scattered on the breezes of Mount Olympus, destroyed with her simple words, no matter how softly she spoke them.