Ritual Magic (27 page)

A slight laugh escaped me even though I
didn't feel like laughing. "The demon likes
Bonanza
? This has got to be a joke!" I watched as Jack
shrugged his shoulders.

"Doesn't
everyone
like
Bonanza
?"

The distraction was well needed, and Jack
sat back in a chair close to the console as Gabriel took a seat
near him, eyeing the screen with distrust.

"I've never watched this series before."

"Oh! It's fantastic to kill time. That's
basically what we have to do..." he eyed me with meaning, "we have
to get our minds off of the wait. A distraction like this is
priceless!" He smiled broadly at me and looked around himself as if
he was hoping that a bag of popcorn would just appear out of thin
air.

"So...what is the point of the show?"
Gabriel looked up at the screen as the opening credits began.

"Priceless intro! Everyone in the United
States recognizes it...maybe even the world." Jack thrummed his
thighs with the beat. "Just keep your eyes on the Cartwright men.
It's sort of like watching
Star Trek
—if
there is someone on an away mission wearing a red shirt that guy is
going to bite the dust. This works much the same way. When a
Cartwright man falls in love with a beautiful damsel in
distress...well, just don't get attached to her."

"That's savage." Gabriel cringed.

"Yeah." Jack smiled. "That's the wild West
for you." He shrugged and then looked up at me apologetically. "It
doesn't apply here, of course." He clarified as I walked towards
the back of the cabin to get myself something to drink.

"Yeah, I know."
Damn. Maybe I have some
Cartwright blood in me. That would really be a cruel twist of
fate.

Three hours had passed and we were still
sitting in the Learjet on the tarmac, hoping to hear anything about
Celeste or Leo. Jack had been keeping track of the women that the
Cartwright men had fallen in love with and lost, and it only seemed
to amplify my fears.
Damned Cartwright men!

We were all sitting there, uneasy about
absolutely everything, when I heard voices coming from the rear of
the plane. My head instantly turned in that direction as I watched
Celeste push away the curtain that led to the very back of the
cabin, followed by a seemingly even more arrogant Leo.

Celeste's eyes were stormy ice-blue clouds
of anger and rage. She was shaking, crackling energy, and there was
a faint scent of burning hair in the air. My mind flew in ten
thousand directions and then zeroed in on the one that was the most
frightening. H
er eyes, they're so cold...so blue. What could
have happened?!

My instincts told me to stay where I was,
but Von made the mistake of getting in Celeste's way.

"Where have you been, Celeste?!"
He
sounds like a broken record! Get over it already
. "What
happened?!" He crossed his arms across his chest, and was
immediately cast aside by nothing that we could see. He flew over
the arm of a seat and gasped wildly for air.
Took a good one to
the stomach, it seems.

Celeste didn't even pause to look at any of
us. She stormed through the cockpit's doorway and slammed it shut
behind her, ensuring that no one was going to attempt to follow. I
doubted that anyone in the room even considered it at that
moment.

"Man, is she
pissed
." Jack shivered
fiercely—over-dramatized for our benefit. We all turned to Leo but
Jack was the one to ask the question. "What happened, Leo? Where
did she go and why is she...like
that
?"

Leo looked around the room at our tense
faces as he reached up and did something I've never seen him do
before—he rubbed the back of his neck. For a typical guy that
usually means frustration, concentration, or total loss of control.
For Leo, it was a dead giveaway that he had experienced something
he wasn't really comfortable with. Leo was
always
comfortable from what I could tell from past experiences. Now, the
fact that this demon was uncomfortable with
Celeste
was
something new—something extremely unsettling.

Leo sat down on the nearest empty seat and
crossed his legs. He looked down at his shoes and frowned, noticing
that they were speckled with sand and tiny spots of water. "Let me
get to your questions before you die of curiosity, my dear Jack. We
were in England with my sister, Sophia."

"Your sister?" Von blurted like he had
something stuck down his throat and it had just been lodged free.
"YOU have a
sister?
"

Looks like he got his breathing back into
gear. Too bad.

Leo lowered his gaze slowly. "Older sister,
but yes." He shuddered slightly when he turned his eyes to me.
"You, my friend, are going to have your hands full." He shoved his
hands down against the front of his suit jacket, squared his
shoulders and then slowly began to smile. Raising an eyebrow, he
crossed his arms and eyed me again. "Maybe she will be too much
woman for you, no? Then I will be able to make my move?" He smiled
broadly as I began to get an intense burning sensation in my
stomach.

I need to eat or I'm going to give myself an
ulcer. Do vampires even get ulcers?

"What are you talking about, Leo?" My voice
was firm. He was being cryptic and annoying—probably his two
favorite things to be.

"Celeste, of course. She is a powerhouse
beyond our expectations. She is nothing like what we previously
observed, and she is much, much more." His eyes burned right
through me before he continued. "You, my friend, will not be able
to control her."

"I've never
tried
to control her." I
shrugged. "That's why we get along so well."

Von's body went tense in the corner of my
eye as I kept looking at Leo for answers.

"So, Leo, what happened at your sister's
place?" England sounded good right about now...anywhere but
here.

"Oh, the usual events. My sister invited
Celeste to lunch, asked her for her first-born child, introduced
her son who happens to be a warlock-vampire half-breed. It was also
revealed that they were the ones behind the shadow demons..."

My body instantly stilled and my heart
seemed to stop in mid-beat. "What did you just say?"

"They were the ones to conceive of and
create the shadow demons." Leo raised a hand to accentuate what he
was talking about—waving it around in tight circles. "It seems that
he created those rabid beasts by using Sophia's blood. He also
seems to be the one controlling them—he was the one that sent them
to kill Celeste before."

My head snapped over to check the cockpit
door. "So what happened then?"

"Sophia sent us back to the beach." He
shrugged.

"Did Celeste get into a fight while she was
there at Sophia's?" Von's voice came out from the spot where
Celeste had deposited him. "Was she physically threatened?" He
seemed bothered by the idea. Guess I couldn't fault him for
that.

"No, actually. Sophia was protective of
Celeste, and sent her on her way when Maximilian began to rage like
a spoiled child." He set his hand on the armrest of the seat and
looked around the room. "What happened
next
is what caused
Celeste to look...a bit rattled." He shrugged and then sat
silently, waiting to be prodded for more information.
Dammit!
That sick demon was getting a rise out of this!

"What happened next?" I heard myself ask,
but I didn't remember opening my mouth to speak. Clearly I was
walking directly into the demon's well-designed trap, but it seemed
as if I didn't even care anymore.

Leo eyed me sadly, as if he were giving me
terrible news, and I shook off the sense of anxiety that was trying
to creep into my gut.

"We were attacked...on the beach...by over
twenty shadow demons." He looked solemnly at me like that answered
every question I could have asked.

My breathing stopped and I shut down all of
my senses as I took what he said into consideration.

"And you saved her?" Jack's voice sounded
small—almost a whisper.

"No." Leo turned his gaze back towards Jack,
"I did not." He looked down at his hands and a wicked grin began to
grow on his face, his lips curling up as his eyes began to
narrow.

"Leo, just get to the point. I'm getting
tired of your theatrics, and you're dragging out this story like a
grandfather telling a tall tale to the grandkids. We aren't
children. Get to it." I growled as I walked quickly to stand over
him. I was just trying to pressure him to talk, but he seemed to
think it meant that I was interested in his dramatic efforts.

"Okay, let me see. I want to ensure that I
get all of the events in the correct order. It would be a shame to
miss any minute detail that could shed light on this very unique
situation. Hmm..." Leo looked down at his hands as if he were
centering himself and then began. "My sister sent us away with her
warlock bodyguard, Enrique, when Maximilian, her adopted son, began
to grow upset. We were then returned to the beach where Celeste had
transported herself to earlier, from the plane. I believe she said
it was Cannon Beach. And then we were attacked."

Lifting his chin, Leo spread his hands out
in front of him like he was adding flare to a magic show.

"We were surrounded by twenty shadow
demons—all poised to kill. Of course, I never figured that shadow
demons would consider taking prisoners so...who knows?" He shrugged
as he brushed his hands down the front of his suit jacket. "I had
just cleared my mind for battle when Celeste began to yell. She was
yelling at just about everything that moved and the shadow demons
seemed to be slightly intimidated by her anger. It was quite
amusing—she was ranging around in a circle and the shadow demons
would inch away from her when she turned in their direction. It was
rich." He laughed openly.

"That was when she began to glow with a
bright blue and white light—she disappeared and immediately popped
up on the water's edge at least one hundred feet away. Her feet
were submerged in the water and she took on the appearance of
someone else entirely. It was a flickering image, but it was
there..." Leo's eyes appeared to haze over as if he were trying to
imagine it again. "It was as if she were a goddess personified—she
was filled with such power...it was breathtaking."

We all simply sat there staring into Leo's
fuzzed gaze and it immediately began to sink in that Leo had fallen
in love with Celeste, and he was recalling moments where his heart
had stood still at simply beholding her. Yeah, I had been there
myself, lived that exact moment of realization where you are
staring down the barrel of the gun that ultimately spelled out
years upon years of celibacy and near loneliness. That was because
loving Celeste Ravenwood meant that you were second to the
necessities of the kingdom, as well as to whoever had laid claim to
her heart before you ever made it to the scene. Leo was just going
to have to take a number, because there was still a long line of
men madly in love with her, and I was at the forefront.

Jack cleared his throat to draw everyone's
attention. "Can you describe what happened in more detail?"

Leo turned in his direction but his eyes
fell back to me, "Celeste's hair seemed to be longer, almost
waist-length. Her clothing was pearlescent and almost glowing. Her
eyes were crystal blue like the clearest morning sky—filtered with
rich sunlight." He paused for effect. "She wasn't herself." He
closed his eyes, dragging a deep breath into his lungs.

"That was when the demons descended, but not
on me—on her. They avoided me altogether and made for her, but she
didn't move away. She simply smiled at them as if she were
welcoming them home. It was truly disturbing, the way that she
smiled at them." He shuddered and opened his eyes again, searching
mine for signs of emotion. "When they finally made it to her, she
had her hands outstretched to her sides. It appeared as if she was
getting ready to cast a shield spell but she didn't. What she
did
do was pull the ocean in around her. I must admit that I
found it almost intimate, and that sat oddly with me." He paused,
turned his hand over to look down at it, and then continued. "Just
as I was running towards her, closing in on the shadow demons
crowding between us, I was stopped by a wall of power—Celeste's
doing." He sighed deeply, his voice taking a ragged depth to it.
"But she had it all well under control, it turns out. She simply
moved her hands around herself like she was performing an ancient
hula dance or something of the kind. It was mesmerizing." Leo's
eyes glazed over again and he lost his place in the story as he
turned his head to caress the cockpit door with his eyes. "She was
a goddess." He grinned lazily towards the doorway.

Dammit! We've lost him again!

I snapped my fingers in front of Leo's face
multiple times but it was no use, because he was obviously in the
middle of a vivid memory. I grabbed his shoulder in frustration,
digging my nails into his muscles and shaking wildly to draw him
back to the conversation.

"What happened, demon?! Continue!" I
bellowed at him.

Leo's eyes immediately turned up to me with
the coldest ice-blue stare I'd ever seen.

"She killed them. She pulled her power about
herself and wrapped the ocean around the shadow demons to tear them
to literal shreds." His eyes sparked to life and immediately glowed
a deep, rich red as a shudder of ice cold pain ran through my
veins—a pain like a shard of frozen rock inching its way to my
heart. "She is beyond your caliber, my friend vampire. She is now a
woman that only an extremely powerful demon king can
appreciate...or possibly a god."

There was utter silence cutting our minds to
shreds as we all tried to process what had taken place out of our
reach, and what that meant for the future.