Wicked Paradise (6 page)

“I made it as a child. How did you...” Shock choked off her voice. At ten-years-old, she’d crafted the charm for the one she hoped to love forever. Little good it did her on soul-sucking Avalon. At the time, she made it for an older sorcerer’s apprentice she believed she loved. Before she gave it to him, a roving band of thieves ransacked the village and she lost the charms to them. Not long afterward, the apprentice disappeared, and she learned later that he had run off to Scotland before Avalon became inaccessible. Gwilym told her the boy was intended for another, that his path traveled in a direction never to cross hers again. She was too powerful for him. Too powerful for any man, it seemed. Longing and pain shoved the dagger into her chest.

The pendants were nothing but a child’s fancies piecing together the old bards’ tales. Too young to know what she was doing, she followed her mother’s spell books. It didn’t matter that she had skipped instructions for the spells she truly wanted in a series of rituals. In the end, she had imbued the amulets with a temporary binding spell, meant to entwine the magic of two Druids with matching pendants who invoked the spell.
Does Father believe we must bind our magic to slay WindWraith?

Morgan sank upon the bed and scooted against the stone wall. She yanked the long tunic over her bare legs as far as it stretched.

Ryan’s eyes deepened into swirling lakes of blue danger. In a blur, he closed the space between them. He bent over her, his large hands taking her shoulders in an unrelenting grip. “Where did you come from?” Flinty-eyed, his face looked carved from the granite surrounding them. “Who sent you here?”

Fire magic rose inside her and sparks dripped off her fingertips. “Take your grimy hands off me! Do you know who you are mauling?” How dare he treat her like a petty horse thief!

Suspicion radiated through Ryan’s hands but he loosened his hold. He could easily snap her body like a twig, toss the pieces into the sea, and not spill a drop of sweat.
Demon or not, I will not cower before him
.

“Drop your magic, sorceress. There’s no call for that. I said I won’t hurt you,” he ground out, a tic in his jaw visible. “You sure as hell don’t want to cross my magic.” Ryan leaned forward as if to force his threat upon her.

Best she calm him lest his earlier regard for her wellbeing turned ugly. “I mean you no harm. I have much to explain to you.” She’d tell him only enough to accomplish her goals. Otherwise, Fate determined their next steps. Wariness stiffened her spine. Her own mistrust over this peculiar twist had a ways to go before it granted her a moment’s peace. Reconciliation within her confused mind was leagues away on a road she’d have to traverse all too soon if the farfetched truths rising in her head gave any indication.

Ryan released her and held out a hand. “Give me the pendant.”

Reluctantly, she dropped it into his palm. As he slipped the braided leather over his head, old memories stopped her heart for an instant, freeing it with a jerk. With dawning horror, she recalled the invocation of the charm’s spell.

“No!” She jumped up and clawed for the amulet, her fingernails raking his chest. Crimson drops welled up on his skin, burning her fingertips.

Too late. The amulet held her touch. And the right combination to set the spell in motion. Her fingers prickled where his fiery blood turned sticky. Ryan sucked in his stomach and stumbled back. His tanned face blanched as the sizzling pendant burned into his skin. Aghast, Morgan stared at the tattoo the pendant began to create on Ryan’s smooth, tanned skin.
Goddess, no! What is happening?
A temporary binding spell wasn’t meant to mark the receiver. Her jaw hung open.

The stone blazed against his chest, blinding her briefly. The engraved runes on the circlet reflected silvery shadows on the cavern’s dim walls. Cursing, Ryan slapped at the pendant. He yanked his singed hand away, grunting deep in his throat. The runes on the pendant’s reverse side blistered the skin over his heart, branding him. The amethyst in the center of the amulet flared in shades from lilac to purple, tinting the rune shadows on the walls.

The crystal’s tiny beams gleamed in Ryan’s wide-eyed reaction to the magic she infused in the charm long ago. A grimace narrowed his glare, the amulet clenched in his white-knuckled fist.

No, no, no!
She wasn’t ready to bind her magic to a stranger. Who knew what mayhem he might do to her or her magic with access to it?
Father, why didn’t you tell me about the charms and their role in my destiny? Where is this information in my head?
She wanted to scream and curse her father and the ancient Druids for giving her the blood to create the wretched magic now tormenting her existence.

A new hunger streaked through her veins, diverting her internal tirade. The vibrant rush of Ryan’s magical essence sank sweetly beneath her skin. She clutched her throat, incapable of stopping the now familiar tingles of the desire she’d felt in her dreams. Unable to deny the compulsion, Morgan brushed Ryan’s hand aside and kissed the singed tattoo, wrinkling her nose at the stench of charred flesh. As her mouth circled the tattoo, her tongue trailed a cooling path to assuage the ring of fire. Not a muscle twitched in Ryan’s body, and his dangerous, dark gaze never left her face. She recited a spell to heal his blistered skin. Flicking her tongue over her lips, she tasted him, relishing his salty sea tang in her mouth. She had the unnatural urge to taste all of him with her lips and her tongue. The friction of the T-shirt against her hardening nipples sent fiery feathers tumbling through her middle. Being so near him, she was unable to shut the floodgates of arousal that had opened in her morning’s dreams.

Ryan remained immobile, but he grew hard against her stomach, the pressure bouncing Morgan from her drowning senses to her impending task. Power roiled inside her in anticipation. She must continue the binding ritual. No other choice existed. Her eyes stung, and she blinked away tears.

Averting her sight from his tented loincloth, Morgan knelt. Thank the Goddess she’d never completed all the spells on the charms as she had intended. She’d maintained a modicum of modesty and hadn’t read the entire series of spells in her mother’s spell books that started with the magic binding...and ended with a mating ritual. She gulped down the dry lump in her throat, fanned her face with her hand.

Ryan grasped her upper arms, tried to lift her to her feet. “What the hell is going on? What did you do to me?”

“It’s a temporary tie to my magic.” She shook off his hold.

“Temporary!” He flicked the hot amulet off his chest, holding it away by the cord. “You call this temporary?” Steam practically blew out of his nose.

“Do not resist, or you will die if I don’t temper the magic,” she bit out. Without the spell’s next step, her powers would blaze through him like a rampant firestorm, eating at him from the inside out, eventually leaving behind nothing but bone dust. If he didn’t first kill himself from the tortuous pain. Or kill her to break the spell. She may not trust him or even like him, and she loathed the fact that he had access to her magic if she let him, but she wasn’t a killer. Not yet, at least.

He straightened, seeming to recognize her candor. His muscles flexed down his torso in a ripple. She took his hand, and his fingers curled instinctively around hers. Without losing another second, she uttered the ancient protection spell. The lump forming in her throat receded, and she started the binding spell, hesitated. More tears welled up.

It was not right, not time to bind herself to a man in any way.

Regardless, the words surfaced. She fingered the water from her eyes. Ryan’s stony gaze was riveted on her face, watching, waiting, fighting his emotions. She wanted to wrap her arms around him, wanted him to hold her. She wished him to know about her dreams and his presence in them, for him to tell her the why of it all. But her head warred with her heart and body. It berated her, told her to walk away, to think, to rationalize her actions. She wrung her hands, fisted them at her sides. Her mind frantically tried to unearth a way out of her predicament. There was no nullification for fleeting spells designed to run their course. She stared at the brand on Ryan’s chest, a very
permanent
binding.
Ignorant sorceress!

Words tripped out in an unstoppable whisper. She didn’t feel the bond, but she would have if Ryan joined in the ritual and bound his magic to her. A tiny thread existed between them now. He’d feel more as the days progressed. She’d feel little to nothing. Perhaps it was for the best, until she figured out how to annul the spell.

The words were said, the Goddess appeased. Tears streamed down Morgan’s cheeks. Nothing ever happened as planned in her life. She failed at dying as she’d prophesied. She had a wealth of knowledge scattered to the winds in her head. She had a vicious creature to kill and an uncertain future on a deserted island, magically tied to a hardened stranger, no less. The idea that she was bound to this man in a way she thought never to occur overwhelmed her, and she rubbed at the increased thumping in her temples. As time passed, Ryan would sense her magic and even delve into her strongest emotions, one step closer to his ability to actually use her magic to supplement his own. Worst of all, the bond could mask his true feelings toward her, leaving her mired in a relationship based on deception.

At least Morgan was certain of one thing. The amulet spells only bound Druid sorcerers, and none other. Ryan O’Rourke was no Fomorian. Morgan closed her eyes.

“Little raven?” Ryan’s constricted voice intruded upon her mental dance of pity.

She whipped her head up and stood ramrod straight. Little raven? Did he know she’d dreamed of him calling her that? Had he shared her morning’s dream? “You called me that in a dream.” She pressed her fists into her stomach.

“I know. I was there.” He touched her lips with trembling fingers. “From the time you breathed air into my lungs as I was drowning, to this morning when I rescued you from falling to your death at the hands of a shadow-shifter.”

Chapter 6

The peculiar resonance of home spooled through the air. WindWraith whipped about, sniffed the familiar reverberations, tasted it on his tongue, relishing the sizzle of magic. He hardly recognized the sweet bite of Druid sorcery. It had been an eternity.

Breathing it in, he filled his shattered being with the remnants of a stolen life. Magic waltzed through him, ancient and memorable, watering the burnt sprout of humanity buried so deep he did not know if enough life existed in it to grow again. The long-forgotten sense of longing splintered his spectral shape into fragments. He yanked his form into a sphere, wallowing in the odd prickles of desire, a sensation he once hoped never to forget, or thought never to experience again.

Dropping to the comforting cavern’s rocky ground, he spread out in a mottled gray blanket across the rubble. He stretched out a tentacle and tentatively touched the ebony stone platform on the black granite altar. The blood-red crystals had died off long ago, bled dry until they were black.

Thin fingers sprouted from his arm-like appendage. They gripped the edge of the stone bed, flowed into tiny fissures deep inside the pillar until his fingers brushed the first layer of untainted stones. Crystals burned his fingers and he howled in pain, folded in upon himself, reducing his corporeal form by half to preserve his strength. He nearly withdrew his melting hand from the stones. Perseverance won out, and he soaked up the energy, fed his malevolence.

Once he grew accustomed to the pain, he spread out on the ground again, undulating softly over the gravel. Buried energy vibrated beneath the island, rippled across his form. The island’s energy had hidden far within the earth’s farthest depths, inching deeper and deeper until he no longer touched or sensed it. Until this moment. The island pulsed in the tip of his finger. Undercurrents of power created a new echo across the ground, surprising him.

Fresh, vibrant power had awakened the island, a force equal to the mage who had caged him in this prison long ago. Strong magic he could use for the escape he’d waited centuries to gain. Remembered pleasure tore blustery cries from him, howling up to the top of the spire. Excitement blossomed from that seedling embedded inside him.

Tsk, tsk
. He always had access to the island’s various energies. However, this new energy proved distinctive. Unsullied, luminous, fed through the gems buried throughout the island—other crystals he was unable to touch or draw near without suffering grave loss to the cells of his finite form. The more energy he soaked up, the blacker his soul became until the earthy force smothered it completely. The stones had destroyed his human form until nothing remained but particles. Evil shards that coalesced and did the bidding of the mind he managed to retain.

He surveyed the dead crystal cavern he called home. Nay, not home, a temporary respite from the ignorant, small world that shunned him. A prison meant to destroy him. He blew out a whooshing laugh, fueling the fire burning on the river’s surface at the far end of his sanctuary. Triumph replaced the heart no longer beating inside him. It pounded a steady rhythm of ecstasy through the diminutive part that remained human.

In response, a human skull screamed at him silently from across the bubbling pools, its mouth a gaping maw of teeth.

WindWraith’s fingers burned. Particles of his shape disintegrated. He held onto the buried crystals, depleting their magic, conquering the island at its own defensive tactics. This slight contact was all he could afford and he needed the energy boost. Needed it to locate the being that possessed such power to awaken the island he threatened into sleep eons ago. The one being that whispered across the twilight of his dreams, and lent him hope. The pure and ancient body from his homeland that promised to take him to the decaying world of the future, where he could exact his revenge on those who lived off his sacrifice.

Oh, yes. The world would finally welcome him home and rejoice at his second coming.

A glorious second vessel had arrived on his wicked paradise.